Stanford Senior Anthology 2024

STANFORDSENIOR ANTHOLOGY2024

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Gavin Jones

Alex Woloch

Jayda Alvarez

Zuni Vinod Chopra

Laney Conger

Destiny Cunningham

Audrey Dickinson

Max Du

Isabelle Edgar

Kate Eselius

Alice Miao Fang

Kyla Figueroa

Briana Maytee García

Laura Gequelin

Harper Hummelt

Nadia Eugene Jo

Autumn Jones

Malavika Kannan

Jared Klegar

Sarah Lewis

Abigail Matsumoto

Uche Ochuba

Nathan Phuong

Kaitlyn Smith

Cierra Spikes

Nicole Tong

PJ Vang

Emma Kexin Wang

Jenny Xiong

Benjamin Yan

Kathryn Zheng

Melanie Zhou

Opening Remarks

Introductory Note

“Kitty’s First Halloween”

“Snow Globes and Wine” “Summer Break” “SPY”

“Neo Yokio: Pink Christmas (reimagined as one of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales)

The Mecha-Butler’s Tale”

“8 Ways of Looking at a Killer Whale” Excerpt “Altgeld Community Garden” “Cher Ami” “Please Be True” “Spots” Art

“Fort Myers Beach” “My Playground” “Intermezzo”

“Left Leaves”

Unprecedented Times: A Novel Chapter 1

“How Do You Become a Writer?” from Catapult “Homing Beacon”

“Ulysses, the Master Rhetorician of Dante’s Inferno” Excerpt “Tree” “Tracks” “Liturgy” “Dreaming Nightmares” “Changing Names” “A Cycle”

“Conversations with Jenny” “The Moth”

“What makes a light bisexual”

“what your mother tells you about her past”

O P E N I N G R E M A R K S

G A V I N J O N E S

Dear Graduating Seniors—

A few years ago, two researchers at the New School for Social Research’s psychology department published a paper in the journal Science, titled “Reading Literary Fiction Improves Theory of Mind.” The paper described an experiment in which the researchers gave different groups of people different kinds of literature to read. Some read “literary” fiction – the kind of material you might find on a college English syllabus. Some read popular fiction. Some read non-fiction. And some read nothing at all. After doing their reading, the subjects of the experiment were presented with a series of cognitive tests, designed to measure empathy, social perception, and emotional intelligence.

The results were dramatic. The readers of literary fiction scored higher across the board. Their consciousnesses were more developed. Their social perceptions were sharper. Their powers of empathy were stronger. They were better people.

Well, duh! Of course they were!

Thankfully, science is there to confirm what you have surely learned as English majors over the last few years. Literature makes us better. It shatters our prejudices. It turns our world upside down. It throws our mind among other minds, into the struggle to make meaning. It uncovers words as magic forms with the power to make and unmake the world.

The most remarkable part of the study in Science was that you don’t have to read a lot of literary fiction to make a difference. Even a small amount – say, an excerpt or two from a National Book Award finalist – was enough to make a significant difference. So, just think of what you have achieved, having mastered an entire sequence of British and American literature; having delved into the theory of narrative and poetics; having read hundreds of books and thousands of pages; having grappled with the art of critical and creative writing; having written essays and theses that drive with scholarly passion into the heart of an idea.

I hereby certify that you are geniuses whose mind-reading skills have the power to change the world!

Wherever you roam now that you are leaving the Farm, I hope you’ll always return home to the values you have learned and loved here. To be uncompromising with the truth yet always suspicious of fact. To luxuriate in nuance and ambiguity. To hear the small voice saying No amid a chorus of Yeses. To see history through the

slanted light that literature casts. To appreciate what lasts and matters in our culture of the immediate. To pull the threads of meaning from a world deeply interwoven with text.

I hope you’ll carry your books with you wherever you go. You may not have to lug them in the dead-weight boxes that I remember, but I hope your books will nudge you, get in the way – of the easy decision, the obvious preconception. If reading makes us better people then perhaps it does so most through its essential gift of uneasiness that keeps us always moving forward along the beautiful edges of dangerous ideas.

Gavin Jones Chair of English

I N T R O D U C T O R Y N O T E

While any department could compile writing from its graduating majors, an anthology such as this is unusually apt for the departing seniors in English. At Stanford, the practice of writing has been at the center of your study – the power, the complexities, the challenges, and the history of writing. If undergraduate education in English means anything, it means that you are leaving Stanford with a different relationship to writing – and thus a different understanding of the texts that circulate around us, the words that we read and construct every day, and the language that is intertwined – for better or worse – with all of our lifeworlds. This collection features individual selections of writing by the graduating class. It is a record of your collective work, which is to say, your collective engagement with the affordances of language, through critical reading and creative writing (as well as creative reading and critical writing). Here you will find poems, interpretive essays, fictions, close readings, memoirs, polemics, literary histories, and other experimental forms of expression and analysis. Here you can see your fellow classmates stretching the possibilities and teasing out the boundaries of language – through your critical encounters with literary texts (whether from centuries ago or radically contemporary) and through your own ongoing efforts at writing, pursued both dayto-day and across the academic quarters of the English major. With good wishes and congratulations,

Alex Woloch Director of Undergraduate Studies

Richard W. Lyman Professor of the Humanities

KITTY’S FIRST HALLOWEEN

JAYDAALVAREZ

Jayda Alvarez

Kitty’s First Halloween

A push-up bra, a brand new face, Whiskered cheeks, cat eared hair. I mix leather, lingerie, and lace to be the hottest person there.

I enter the function, spirits so high That you'd think I pregamed with a Stiiizy And Skyy. It's my first college party. My Goal is twofold: get drunk and get busy.

The people are as hot as their costumes Are bad. There's one exception: a Harry Potter who, well-endowed with a toy broom, Sends a wink. I blow a kiss, my cherry

Lips still puckered when a smoking brunette In a Hogwarts costume whacks my shoulder. “That’s my boyfriend.” I break into a sweat Zipping to the kitchen. With a bold purr

I gain admission. Drinks fly full throttle. I chase some Grey Goose, I bear my White Claws, I swim through a champagne bottle like a sexy axolotl. My paws

Will not pause as I fetch another cup. Liquid courage makes flirting easy. I have my pick of a Marvel lineup— I’m in Thor’s arms when I start to feel queasy.

I’m fine, I think, and the nausea will pass, But one whiff of Thor’s sweat urges a gag That causes a burp that smells like noxious gas. It’s time to release the cat from its bag.

English Major

Creative Writing emphasis, Prose

Jayda Alvarez

I pull my cat ears off my frizzy curls, My stomach whirls like some girl on some pole; A rando holds my hair back while I hurl into a pestilential toilet bowl.

I turn around to thank the kind stranger— Imagine my surprise when my eyes lock With those of sexy Hermione Granger. It's a beheading by a short, sharp shock.

I stumble out the door and feel a gust Of November wind whistling through the air. I start home but keep stopping to adjust My pants—now I wish I wore underwear.

SNOW GLOBESAND WINE

ZUNIVINODCHOPRA

Snow Globes and Wine

English Major

Creative Writing emphasis, Prose

“Funeral wine, the kind you drink for the gods. They haven’t made it for a long time. It’s seasoned with bitter aloes and rosemary, and with the tears of broken-hearted virgins.”

– Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

Door-to-door salesmen have it worse, I think.

The worst you can tell them is no.

“I do not want the knick-knacks you pulled out of a dead grandmother’s attic I do not find you worth the strength it takes to tarry at the door

I wish you had not rung at my address at all

I wish your shirt wasn’t wrinkled and your pit stains didn’t seep till your middle and your briefcase didn’t jam when you tried to open it, and you hadn’t wasted my time.”

That is what you would tell him.

“No.

I will not buy your snow globes

And you will not eat dinner tonight. And you might even starve.

And no one will find your corpse, keeled over on the table, Until it starts to smell funny and the lady next door complains that it makes her stomach hurt and her baby cry

And the policemen break down your door, because what if someone has done something terrible to you, And they find you there, dead, because you didn’t sell a snow globe And they are peeved, a little Because you wasted their time.”

The worst you can tell me is far better than that. You can tell me no.

“I do not want the knick-knacks you pulled, dusty and cracked, from a wasted heart I do not find you worth the patience it takes to listen to your sonnet

I wish you had not fallen in love with me at all

I wish your affection wasn’t sticky and sour and your desperation didn’t sweat off your tongue and your face were painted over a little bit better, and maybe your tits too, at that, and you hadn’t wasted my time.”

Zuni Vinod Chopra

That is what you would tell me.

“No.

I will not keep this ragged thing safe, And you will not be loved tonight. And you might even starve.

And you’ll melt to hunger until you meld with hunger, and you do not remember what it was that you hungered for, only that you are hungry, and you’ll roam the world like a dead man’s shadow trying miserably to find something that’s hungrier than you.

And you will not find it.

But you’ll peeve a lot of people off in trying, you see,

Because you’ve wasted their time.”

And I will go home.

And I will sit on a random bus stop when it rains, and a door-to-door salesman will come sit beside me to let the rain wash away the funk of well-kept suburbs

And he will tell me,

“Don’t worry too much.

My mum would say, you know, that tomorrow’s another day.

And who knows, perhaps you’ll find someone tomorrow who thinks you’re awful shiny

And decides he would like you on his mantlepiece

And maybe it won’t matter that you’re crying now. Anyways

Maybe you’ll laugh at how pathetic you were then

And you won’t even regret that you were crying

Because the rain will take your tears

To brew with honey, mist and matches

To make wine, red like curdled blood, so tawny and salty and silken

No mortal could ever deserve it

At least your tears will please the gods.

And they will drink them at funerals, then, Toast to Cupid and Icarus and Aphrodite, Maggot-riddled in graves that you’ll never find,

And drink your grief to the ones who died.”

SUMMER BREAK LANEYCONGER

Creative Writing Minor Poetry subplan

Summer Break

Our socks black with New York City roof we were sober enough on the climb down to notice that the shoddy ladder and railing-less balcony had been an ambitious route for two drunkards but being proud dykes in the June heat of the city for the first time there was nothing that could have stopped that kissing billboards and antennas all around us some piece of metal against my back. And so we found ourselves invincible clambering back through the window the abandoned party long over our stranger of a host gaping as we scrambled for some shoes and excuses grinning our way through the doorway exploding back into that blue-purple billow of night that had painted us so bold and touchable.

Laney Conger

SPY DESTINYCUNNINGHAM

Creative Writing Minor Prose subplan

SPY

When I was a child, I was a spy, Scaling the rugged cliffs of kitchen chairs, To breach the summit of grandmother's cabinets, Unearthing cookie-jar treasures, sugar-dusted and sweet.

Beneath the surface, I'd dive deep, Through the oceanic depths of mother's drawers, Sifting through silken waves of scarves and stories.

I'd roll on pine-sol seas, our wooden floors a ship, Navigating through the islands of living room furniture, An adventurer in a land of cushioned coasts and carpeted plains. Come twilight, I’d listen to the sky's symphony of fireworks.

In this world, nothing could harm me, Not even when fireworks morphed into gunshots, Echoing in the night like a distant, uninvited danger, My realm remained undisturbed, commanded by imagination.

AUDREYDICKINSON NEOYOKIO: PINK CHRISTMAS

Audrey Dickinson English Major Literature emphasis

Neo Yokio: Pink Christmas (reimagined as one of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales)

The Mecha-Butler’s Tale

Prologue to the Mecha-Butler’s Tale

“Pray tell me, Charles, must stay I here all night, While shoppers browse, instead in bed lay I? For how can one indulge in Christmas cheer With aches and pains and fever so severe?”

“Your suffering knows no bounds, good sir. Perhaps Some entertainment helps the time elapse?”

The butler by his bedside sat and said And offered Kaz a tale to clear his head.

The pink-haired bachelor then nodded yes, As Charles knew best of all how to impress. Eyes rolling back he searched for words he had, And then began the Christmas tale for Kaz.

The Mecha-Butler’s Tale

“New Testament with Mathew One to start, Allow me to recite the festive part. The Book of Generation: Jesus Christ, The son of David, guide to Paradise. And Abraham begat Isaac, who then Begat Judas’s father, brethren And begat Judas Zara of Thamar—”

“My goodness Charles, your tale is too bizarre! What is this mess you spew that chafes my mind?”

“But sir, this tale’s the first one of its kind! Still let me conjure something to your taste; You may suggest the subject, time, and place.”

“An excellent concession might I say, How ‘bout we choose yours truly, present-day?”

“New content just for you I will compose With such inspired ideas you propose.”

Kaz laid back down and gazed out at the view, And so began the Christmas tale anew.

Audrey Dickinson

The

Mecha-Butler’s Tale

There once was lowly sales clerk named Herb, Whose job at Bergdorf Goodman found superb. In his apartment prepped he for the day, To help the elite shop and spend and pay.

[“Why is this herb taking up so much space?” “Be patient, sir, I’m sure you’ll find your place.”]

With passion great he clocked in to do work, Devoted was he to be sales clerk. Herb welcomed shoppers prêts to spend it all, Concerned not if account balance should fall. These customers forked over thousands each, No item designer was out of reach.

[“Okay then, Charles, I’m sure the scene is set. Why haven’t I appeared in this tale yet?”

“In due time, sir, your name shall come about. I wish my narrative you would not doubt.”]

Versace, Gucci, Prada, and Chanel, Such luxury did Herbert love to sell. Into the store walked Kaz to buy a gift, Whom Herb had greeted bright and bold and swift: “Hello, sir! May I help you make a sale?”

[“Finally, I’ve appeared in this great tale.”]

Kaz told the clerk he needed something grand, But did not know what, as he had not planned. An annual event for bachelors best Required them to gift-give in contest. Assigned the Santa secret to a gent, Next week would be the televised event.

“It is an honor to help Kaz Kaan shop, But may I ask with whom you will gift-swap?”

Audrey Dickinson

Kaz was not happy with his chosen man, A rival that he could not bear to stand.

Arcangelo Corelli was his name, Unceasingly did he boast ‘bout his game. Ranked number one most eligible gent, Far too much time on his hair had he spent. Those yellow shorts clashed ‘gainst his blazer worn, Kaz wished in secret he was never born. Just then, the door flew open with a crash, And in he walked with confidence so brash.

“Hey look! It’s Kaz! Ranked number two in style! Behind me, yes. Who could resist this smile?

You’re here to shop for lavish gifts, I see.

Please make sure that it’s good—I know it’s me.”

“How could you tell?” asked Kaz in disbelief.

“No need to be upset and rehash beef!

Let bygones pass so we can mend this rift. When the time comes, I hope you like my gift.”

“Why do you reveal all before the match?”

“The secret’s not why people come to watch! They want to see men young in looks and age Exchanging gifts worth more than them on stage.”

The sales clerk stood there reeling with delight; Two bachelors highest-ranked were in his sight. He worshiped and revered them for their charm, And knew he could save Kaz from any harm.

“I’ll see you at the gift exchange next week!”

And quit Arcangelo from that boutique.

“What am I meant to do, oh sales clerk? What kind of gift is suited for a jerk?”

Herb got down on one knee and looked at Kaz, “My liege, if you say yes, I will act as The finest personal shopper ever lived,

So you’ll have something fabulous to give.”

The offer Kaz accepted with great thanks; Archangelo had rendered his mind blank.

So Herb set out in search of goods unique, And stumbled on a shop of clocks antique.

Audrey Dickinson

The keeper heard for whom the gift was for, And pulled out a small box from his locked drawer. “Corelli be the one to receive this, An object of heritage will not miss. Belonging to his grandfather who died, This heirloom remains all that has survived.”

Inside the box, a pocket watch engraved With images of that man who was brave. “Oh my!” said Herb, lifting the watch with care, So shocked and pleased to find a gift this rare. The sales clerk paid the shocking sum, well knowing The good fortune this offer would be sowing. Herb rushed to Kaz’s penthouse in the city, Thinking all the while how it’d look on TV.

Kaz thanked him for his ideas and his time, And Herb went home by subway dense with grime. A week had passed with full anticipation, So right at eight the clerk flipped to the station. The broadcast introduced these esteemed men, Top-ranked bachelors seated there were ten. All dressed in suits and eager to receive Expensive cognacs, cars, and equity.

Eventually Kaz rose to take his turn And called his nemesis, expression stern: “Arcangelo, please come receive your gift.”

Right then, he stood, ever so slightly miffed, Apologized and said, “Accept I not This gift. It’s clear to me that you forgot The true meaning of Christmas time! For shame! It seems it’s me that must remind You that this spectacle of material Creates not joy but greed within you all. Therefore, I challenge you to give from heart And not from hand. To demonstrate, I’ll start By singing Kaz a song about our bond.”

Kaz stared in shock, unable to respond. He pulled out his guitar and struck a chord While bachelors turned to each other, floored.

Audrey Dickinson

Back on his couch, Herb sat with mouth agape, Unable to accept this change of fate. The broadcast hosts then asked aloud, “How do You calculate the value of a tune?”

Arcangelo sang loudly with intent, Convincing all to reflect and repent. He told them to seek moments and not things, And shared that he’d host a show where he’d sing: “Come one, come all, to my spectacular, If you would like to see me play guitar. A ticket to my show you’ll need to buy, I’ll see you all in concert Friday night!”

Kaz went to him, sensing sincerity, But all was not as it had seemed to be.

He scoffed and asked, “You really believed that? This show will make me rich in no time flat. People follow whatever I may say; I hope you’ll come and see me Christmas Day!”

The next day Herb returned to find the store Filled with customers, shoppers, friends no more. The manager called Herb to fire him, Since revenue prospects were looking grim. They said they could not keep him there on board; Low profits meant Herb they could not afford.

Despite his loyal service to the cause, Herb packed his things and left with no applause. The company his service had abused, Which left Herb feeling hurt, lost, and confused. Betrayed by those he proudly served for life, Into his back they stabbed him with a knife. In service of elites’ capital gains, The purpose of his life went down the drain. In search of higher meaning did he go, And left the cursed city: Neo Yokio.

Audrey Dickinson

Epilogue to the Mecha-Butler’s Tale

“What then? That’s all? Charles, I cannot concur!”

“Did my story not please you then, good sir?”

“I’m not sure how to feel. It’s all a blur, And I’m not sure what moral to infer.”

8WAYSOF LOOKINGAT AKILLER WHALE

MAXDU

8 Ways of Looking at a Killer Whale Excerpt

WAY 1

Marni woke at 3:30 am to the buzz of her phone. She smelled fish again. Somehow it had been tracked into bed. The phone glowed bright on her chest. It cast the room in a dim greyness. Her husband slept with his arms curled around a pillow. Her son’s head was buried in the warm cave of her armpit. Two hours ago, he had burst into the bedroom, clutching his plushie orca tight to his chest and telling tales of dark figures roaming across his bed.

She pulled the phone close to her face and squinted at the small block of text from Kyle, the junior trainer on night watch.

Hi Marn sorry u r probably asleep but Gara has relapsed. vet is on the way I’m suiting up.

The blanket was hot and heavy, the room was cold, but Marni pulled herself out. She looked at the two men in the king-sized bed, their chests heaving slowly. She wondered if she had promised anything about tomorrow, a Saturday. How would she explain another early morning, another late night? Mark wasn’t good at parenting Jake, who would badger him into another scoop of ice cream or—two hours ago— letting him into the master bedroom. With the whales, Marni knew how to lay down the ground rules. Somehow with Jake, things were slipping.

She pulled on the work clothes that she had set for tomorrow and grabbed her bag from dining room table before opening the garage door. Early morning or late night, she didn’t know how to call this time. The moon was low and silver across the road, wet from last night’s rain.

When she pulled out of the neighborhood, the only light came from a lamppost down the street. The Chen family. Loved the whales, loved Marni. Across the street a golden retriever slept with a chain around her neck, tied to a stake in the yard. Marni slowed a little. She pulled down the window and looked. Stella was breathing fine. The collar was chafing and a doughnut of dirt had formed on the ground where Stella had paced against her chain. The Geralds didn’t know how to treat their dog correctly. On multiple occasions she had tried giving them a collar that wasn’t a loop of chain. They had turned it down. I’m a killer whale trainer, she had said once in a fit. I’ve been working with animals for twenty years.

Even a few blocks from home, Marni could see the spiral slides of water parks. The orange security lights cast the plastic into a monochrome wash. She pulled up next to a twister slide as she stopped at a red light. It was shaped as a toilet bowl, open at the top where the riders spun towards the drain. On the days she got off in the afternoon,

these parks were filled with people. The lines snaked down from the launch deck. They had flushed faces and streaks of sunscreen. All of them stuck in their little Margaritavilles, soaking up the sun, letting the salt whiten on their skins. She wasn’t supposed to dislike these people; they’re the ones who watch her shows too. All the same, Marni always wondered how much they would care about a sick whale calf who had yet to learn the fun tricks.

All five of the corporate vets had been coming to see Gara these past couple of days. They had taken blood samples and phlegm samples by holding a petri dish over Gara’s blowhole. Yesterday, the lead vet Lenny texted the trainer groupchat with the lab results: Gara was suffering from acute pneumonia. They put her on 24-hour watch.

A wooden carving of her tail hung from Marni’s rearview mirror. When Anda gave birth to her first daughter, Marni had taken a picture of Gara’s floppy tail. Junior trainer Roxy carved the ornament in her wood shop. What did relapse mean for Gara? Marni felt the ornament between her fingers, the wood smooth from varnish. From the sickness Gara had lost much of her prenatal fat. When she left last afternoon, she could have counted each individual rib on the animal’s body.

She hadn’t checked the groupchat since she clocked out. At daycare, her son Jake had gotten into some fight. That’s what they told Marni at the pickup line. She was still in her work clothes and her hair was sticky with salt. Jake wouldn’t tell Marni anything about what happened. There will be no punishment, Marni had said. I just want to know why you punched a girl in the face. Jake had bounced up and down on his rainbow yoga ball and said nothing. He had tears in his eyes.

The light turned green, and someone honked from behind. She pressed the gas and turned onto the main road. Within minutes, she was on the highway. She took the HOV lane, because at this time of night, everything felt legal.

Marni slipped off her clothes in the trainer’s locker room. She pulled off her wedding band and a little necklace made of shell that junior trainer Roxy had given her. From her locker she pulled on her work wetsuit. As she scraped the gunk from her eyes and stared at a reflection in the dark windows, she felt the ache at the back of her head, her shoulder, her calves. Through an open window came the chuff of a whale’s breath—Gara, by the rasping sound—and Marni ran out to the pool deck, zipping up the suit through a long cloth tail.

The figure was crouched over the pool edge. He had hair tied back in a tight ponytail and the pool lights cast him in silhouette.

“Right there.” He pointed to the small calf in this pool. The animal had thin fins and a caramel-yellow hue on her lighter patches. Her whole body undulated wildly

as she moved her tail back and forth. Kyle had a clipboard on his lap with a table of numbers.

Gara tilted her head up and began a spasmodic ascent to the surface. When her head was at the surface, she took a long, deep breath. In the shine of the medical spotlight, Marni saw how the blowhole gaped open for a very long time. Gara took breath after breath, her tail beating eddies into the water. The tail had become more ragged, even thinner. Or maybe it was her imagination. The water made light slapping sounds against the tank walls. There came a sudden urge to jump into the pool, to hold Gara’s body right at the surface and feel how every breath expanded her small body. She wanted a pill from Lenny that would fill the flesh from her ribs.

Kyle turned to look at his superior. “Marni, are you ok?”

“Where’s Lenny?”

“On his way.”

Marni got up and walked to the row of boxes on the side of the fish kitchen. By memory she opened the one for the correct zone. She flicked the one for the gate between the main backstage pool and the medical pool.

Kyle stood by the switch boxes. “Sorry I called you down here,” he said.

“You didn’t call me down here.”

“I knew you’d come.”

“It’s Gara. Of course I would come.“ Marni pointed at the open gate to the medical pool, where the bottom was rigged to a hydraulic system that could raise an animal out of the water.

Kyle didn’t move. “She’s not trained for directions. Or the med pool.”

Under the proper curriculum, a whale would learn to move in the direction of a trainer’s pointer finger. A whale needed training to stay in the med pool too. Marni could only imagine what the whining hydraulic pump sounded like to a whale, and the panic of feeling the pool narrowing until none of it remained.

“Anda,” said Marni. “Get her mom in here.”

As Kyle worked the gate switches and sounded the recall tone for Anda, Marni went to look for Lenny. She looked past the row of trimmed hedges and into the staff parking lot, but there were just the two trainer cars and the police cruiser of the night watchman. Someone at the park audio booth had forgotten to cut the music at closing time. Marimba music flowed through the lit pathways. Without the people, they were abnormally wide and meandering. Lenny was not here yet.

From behind came a loud whoosh. Marni had worked with Anda long enough to know her breath by sound alone. The whale headed straight for her calf. She scooped up the small body on the tip of her nose and pushed it gently to the surface. Marni could hear the calf’s feeble squeaks. Anda responded with her own.

The robust behavior framework used at this park discourages the attribution of human emotions onto animals. Marni had to remind many of her trainers about this central tenet. It’s the behavior, not the feeling. Yet Anda’s vocalizations sounded mournful, and when she tilted her laden head towards the humans, it seemed almost like a plea.

With an exaggerated gesture, Marni looked Anda in the eye and pointed her to the medical pool. Anda moved slowly towards the open gate, calf still draped across her nose. Marni felt her heart pounding. If Gara could get into that pool and let them close the gate, then Lenny could have a chance at treating her. In the larger pool, not much could be done.

The two whales were in the small pool now. Anda had let her calf go, but they swam side by side, circling in the rectangular box. Marni looked over at Kyle, who already had his hand on the right switch. “Close it,” she said.

Kyle flicked the switch and air flooded the pistons in the opposite direction, swinging the padded metal grate towards the opening. Gara jolted at the sound of the gate and perhaps the smallness of this pool. In normal training, they would have done these steps over the course of weeks: first just the entrance with plenty of fish and toys, then a dry run of the hydraulic pumps to acclimatize to the sound. The gate closure would happen later. An animal could easily bolt, and that’s what Gara did. With inches remaining on the gate, she sprang from her mom and swam clumsily into the gap. An alarm sounded and the gate automatically reversed its direction. Gara swam through the opening, and Anda followed close behind.

Kyle snapped his fingers. “Damnit."

"We need to try again," she said.

The large pool was shaped like a kidney bean. Trainers called it the "Classroom" because most of the training sessions took place here. The tapered ends had gates that led to other pools. Marni’s medical pool gate stood in its safety position, the metal frame held firmly to the tank wall with an electromagnet. Whenever the gate system detected a whale collision, it automatically locked itself in this state.

She looked around. "Kyle," she said.

When Kyle came over, she flicked open the fiberglass case that contained the gate circuitry. "I’m going to do something that you can’t log in the report tonight," she said. "Yes?"

Kyle nodded slowly. He fingered his ponytail, where a thin stream of water dripped.

Marni grabbed hold of a thick wire inside the box. Yanking it down, she pulled the terminal free. The gate released from the magnet with a clicking sound.

"You need to disconnect the pneumatic too," said Kyle. He pointed to the set of

tubes that went to the gate pistons. With a curled finger he pulled the emergency pressure relief valve and a silver cloud of compressed air hissed into the moonlight. Now, the gate swung freely in the water, groaning on its hinges.

Marni gave a thumbs-up. "Back to the good old days."

She looked at Anda again. The calf was back on her nose. She had been keeping it above the water surface. Anda’s breaths were labored. Marni made the hand gesture for Anda to come to attention. She followed Marni’s index finger and pushed Gara slowly through the opening of the medical pool.

"Okay, now easily, easily," said Marni. Pushing as hard as she could to fight the water current, she helped Kyle swing the gate towards the waiting latch. The two whales were on opposite sides of the closing gate. Gara made a string of warbled vocals. Hearing Gara, her mother startled. She gave a vigorous breath and headed directly for the metal slats of the gate.

"Fuck!" yelled Marni. "Hands off!"

Anda collided with the gate, slamming it back open. Marni and Kyle pulled their hands free moments before they would have been crushed.

"Not you now, Anda. Come on," she said. "We’re trying to save your daughter’s life."

Gara had swam back into the main pool with Anda. They were circling slowly. The white of the medical spotlamps gleamed off their backs, one large, one small, bumpy with ribs.

Marni looked down at her hands. Something had cut her, and a thin stream of blood pooled at the tip of her middle finger. Yesterday, Jake had tried to take his goldfish on a walk. Jake was going through a phase where he performed acts of inconceivable cruelty, and then cried about it. There was water and fish scales all over his nightstand. Bawling, he walked up to his mom, cupping the dead fish in his hands. Marni had thought of Gara then, too. How she had put her hands on Lenny’s shoulders and asked if he could heal this whale calf.

Kyle sighed. "I’m gonna call Roxy."

"The hell you’re not," said Marni.

Kyle put his hands up. "Marn. Not the time for you to be catty."

"Look at how Anda rammed that gate."

"Roxy can handle her."

"No she can’t," said Marni. "Not right now." Junior trainer Roxy had strayed somewhat from Marni’s wisdom of strict behavior analysis. She made stories for behavior. If Anda bent this way, she was sad and itching for companionship. If she made that sound, she was curious. They were good stories. Marni liked to hear them even though they were just pieces of fantasy.

"She got Anda out of Tibby’s way, remember?"

"Yeah," said Marni. "With my help."

"Come on, Marn," said Kyle. "You’re always like this with Roxy behind her back."

"I speak my mind."

Kyle shrugged. "And I disagree."

From their position at the gate, they could see the parking lot again. Lenny’s car had pulled into the usual parking spot while they had been messing with the gate. The door opened, and Lenny walked stiffly towards the employee entrance. He had his usual Yeti thermos in one hand.

Kyle looked at Marni. "Well, Lenny’s here and Gara’s in the main pool. What are you going to do?"

Marni clenched her fist. It was sticky. The cut was somewhere, not large. A little cut could produce a lot of blood. "Fine," she said. "Call Roxy."

Max Du

ALTGELD COMMUNITY GARDEN ISABELLEEDGAR

Isabelle Edgar English Major Creative Writing emphasis, Poetry

Altgeld Community Garden

Yesterday you traded a joint for more packets of sunflower seeds than I’ve ever seen. The kinds with names like basketball teams: American Giants, Russian Mammoths. On that first planting day, when we pretend we aren’t cold, the landlord says he’s selling the plot to build a condo.

So we filled our arms and shirts with toothless rakes, uprooted adolescent herbs with yellow shovels. And we put the scrap wood pile into the bed of a keyed truck, the pile that housed all the good neighborhood rats. The ones that come out on those sweet, candlelit nights. When we’d sit on cold chairs and play mancala with wood chips— I could always see your breath.

To get back at him or something, we set ourselves to sowing sunflowers on the once-upon-a-time-it-was-a-garden land. You sketched a maze of seeds on the dirty white refrigerator, poked holes in the top of an empty orange juice bottle, then we walked. Al against American Giants and Russian Mammoths, you grin, lining the perimeter with seeds and showering them with your makeshift watering can. If we were children, it would've been a victory.

We moved before those men came in with fences and cement. We never found out if they grew. Or how tall.

CHERAMI KATEESELIUS

Kate Eselius

Cher Ami

This letter recounts the experiences of Cher Ami, a renowned carrier pigeon in World War I. Cher Ami delivered a critical message even while wounded, showcasing the pivotal role played by carrier pigeons during the war.

Dearest Friend,

I hope home is just as wonderful as when I left. I do hope you are well. I myself have indeed seen better days. Right now, I am on my way back home to America to recover from my injuries. Let me tell you what happened...

I was stationed at 49.1667° N, 5.0000° E with two other flying soldiers, Francis and Annette. I remember the humans who had worked with us to know how to return home when taking flight from any location. We were ready to serve our country, but we weren’t sure we’d be called to action given all the new technology humans have developed.

It was early October and my division was heading into a forest when we were overrun with German soldiers. We were perched on a hill, facing a ravine, cut off from supplies and support and facing many more foes. We were trapped. From my cage, I could see mounds of dirt erupting from the ground after a noise that left my head ringing. The noise was too much. I started pacing in my cage, and I could hear my heartbeat racing. I tried to think back to the times when I was able to hear a storm before it struck. I remember hearing the sharp crack and low boom in the distance, looming. I tried to tell myself it was just a storm. But as I looked around, I knew it was no storm. The crack was piercing and the boom that came after it, took out whole sections of the ground. No storm would do that.

For many days, we were trapped. Someone approached Francis, another flight soldier, with a written message in their hands. The human opened the cage and secured the message to his foot. I heard the human make noise but I do not understand those sounds. Francis readied himself for flight by stretching his wings and took off, mission accepted. He did not make it far. Francis was shot down and fell from the sky. Looking back, I think I must have gone into shock. My body was tense and racing at the same time. My senses were on fire with the noise, so much so that I didn’t register all of my surroundings. I don’t think any of us were.

The human said something else and approached Annette’s cage. She too readied herself. She set off with another message, and rose higher above the ground. She was crossing the ravine when all of a sudden she fell from the sky. Her body was twisting in the wind as she dropped and part of me first thought she was performing a beautiful sky dance.. We don’t do those, but our cousins do. I once saw one at home

Kate Eselius

in America, when a male rose to 300 feet and free-fell, twisting and diving all the way down to impress his mate. I waited for Annette to level out a few feet from the ground to complete the sky dance. She never did.

I felt detached from my body when the human approached me. He opened the cage, and secured the message to my right foot. He stepped out of the way and I knew it was time. All I knew was the mission – fly back to base. I extended my wings and shot out of the cage. I rose high above, my senses trying to connect with the pull I felt toward base. I tried to connect, but my senses were completely overwhelmed. I needed to get out of here. I flew higher and began my path to get out of the ravine. I refused to look anywhere but forward. All of a sudden, I felt a sharp pain radiating through my body. I stopped flying – I couldn’t seem to move. I was falling. I was going to die.

The wind was sharp and piercing as it cut through me in my descent. Sharp objects were cutting through the air and I was devoured by the loudest storm I had ever heard. Cracks and booms consumed me as I approached the ground. At the last moment, I snapped back to reality and leveled my still functioning wings, just in time to avoid the impact. I needed to get out of there. Once leveled, I flew as fast as I could to get away from the terrible storm. Once past the ravine and the forest, I looked down. My leg was hanging limply in the air and red drops were dripping out from my chest. I started to feel everything. The pain was terrible, but I had to complete my mission. For what seemed like forever, I flew. I focused not on the pain but on the low hum that pulled me to where I needed to go. Eventually, I reached the base and collapsed and everything went dark.

I awoke with a bandage on my leg and chest, and realized I could only see from one eye.

But that was okay, I had seen enough.

I head home now to you, eager to live in peace. I never want to hear a storm again. Yours truly, Cher Ami

PLEASEBE TRUE ALICEMIAOFANG

Alice Miao Fang

Please Be True English Major Literature emphasis

This week Marge won the raffle. She got a jittery round of applause, and a couple of hugs all around as she’d been having a bit of bad luck and this was her first time. A swollen scarf was produced from her handbag and wound around my neck. It matched my favorite shirt.

I was treated to apple pie and ice-cream across the street. Marge’s smile was Victory pink. I couldn’t stop staring at her awful caked eye makeup, and she blushed a little. “Aren’t you going to have something?” I asked.

“Aren’t you going to call me Gammy?” Said the old flirt.

“I’m not obligated to do that, Marge, but okay.”

We spent a while going over our respective preferences for the arrangement. Marge was a slow one in the club and I assumed she didn’t get invited to tea with the other girls often enough to have heard all about the kinky stuff they’d done as my temporary adopted grandmothers. I didn’t particularly like old people but I didn’t mind being there for this lot. They never talked about anything other than knitting and strawberry shortcakes but I knew all their grandsons died in the war.

I ate up my dessert. She called the waitress over again and asked for Dr Pepper. They’d run out.

“Now what?” She said, a bit crestfallen. “I haven’t got too many hobbies myself, I’m afraid. What are you young people up to these days?”

“I thought I’d go looking for someone, if we’ve got nothing better to do,” I said.

Vision of Janie standing in a pencil skirt and heart-shaped sunglasses. My stolen taxicab was stuffy and smelled like the movies. She touched its headlights. I looked out the window where the sky was blue and foamy.

“Don’t give me the doe eyes,” she said. But maybe that was another time. She crawled in. “Turn right.”

“What would Marlowe do?” I asked.

“He’s six foot two. You’ll never be.” Said Janie. Her voice was very close to my ear.

I stopped looking at the road. Each time I blinked Janie was a different person, or her face was lit differently, but always smiling and smiling. She said something in funny French, something Vague . “Will you sit still?” I said. And that line sounded

Alice Miao Fang

familiar. WILL YOU SIT STILL? I hate it when you raise your voice, mister. Can’t I keep my jacket on? Can’t you keep your jacket on? I’ll be ironing my shirt at two a.m. “I got the couch,” I said.

“Everybody got the couch,” said Janie. I couldn’t see anything very well. The nausea went with the high and meal-less days always become narrower, but the contract said I had to smile at the audience which did not exist, not yet, I was their maker somehow; I’d believe in Benjamin more if he hadn’t died so young. “Let’s start over, Jude.” It could have been any of those nights that she’d said it, and we always did it on the couch, Janie liked to think she was the Money Man, sometimes chewing a cigar, delighting in dramatic vulgarity, but making it playful and even a bit tender, somehow. Because she was so soft-spoken, a lesser actor, but she had a real honest body and my voice box had wires in them. “Try to focus or we’re going to crash.”

**

Marge took me to a double feature. Viewing erotica with someone who could be your grandma, but wasn’t, but pretended that she was, made a very strange experience. I kept looking at her, wondering what this picture possibly had to do with Janie, or maybe that’s just what Marge liked, you never know, especially with the quiet ones. And anyways they were all the same to me. When credits rolled Marge touched my arm, whispering, “how’d you like that?”

I tried to explain to her that I wasn’t really a person, and was thus wired differently in certain areas. I’d gone over this time and again with the old girls, but you had to be patient. In the thick, wet darkness I screwed loose an eyeball to show her the mechanics in the socket. She shrugged; you really can’t impress a 1954 audience. “So how are you wired?” She asked.

“Gloria Swanson,” I said, “shooting Bill Holden dead in her pool.”

**

You can bet I’d gone to my share of Hollywood pool parties, but I always had a strange phobia of them. I was water-proof, of course. “Weren’t you born in a fountain?” Janie once asked, in Waldo swimsuits, feet dirtied by sand. “Precisely,” I said, “these psychoanalysts are going to have a field day with a story like that.” We went in the ocean, because the ocean was alright. What really stiffened my chest were the tiles like baby teeth, the mathematical cube, tufts of artificial greens swooning in double-vision, lawn chairs, the way sun rays dilated and vaporized like blood, the sweet bulge of liquid vertigo. Starfish grey and my speckled tie floating in

Alice Miao Fang

fatal hesitation. But Janie, I didn’t know you were such a keen swimmer. You’re swimming toward me, feet off the ground, just mildly, I thought of the beautiful delicate feet of fruit flies. It was the idea of being preserved. **

“What about Gatsby?” Asked curious Gammy.

“There’s no image. A thin red circle…And besides, it’s a lousy revenge killing.”

The next one opened with one of those woodcut, Nosferatu landscapes. Carelessly grainy, German, sterile, harmless. I was ready for sleep. “So where does Janie come in?” I asked her.

Marge told me, giddily secretive, that her name was on the poster. “But it could have been any odd Jane,” I said, deflated. “And she could have lied to me about her name.”

“But you movie people are always lying about your names,” said Marge. A carriage on rocky cliffs, demonic horses, zoom in. There was something off about the background, I thought. It had no depth. Or maybe the screen had no depth.

“Say,” said Marge, poshly, “is that your girl?”

**

“It opened innocently enough,” I said.

Janie rolled down the window. “Until you saw my face?”

Until the sheen on your teeth was ragged as the face of Mars, and they parted—the soft innards of your mouth squirmed.

“You’ll have to tell me,” I said. “Was it you?”

“Wouldn’t I have known?”

“But your name was on the poster.”

“If I had my way I’d like to take credit for everything.”

“The characters were called Charlie and Samantha.”

I caught Janie’s eye in the slanted mirror. “They’re characters alright,” she said.

“She looked every bit like you,” I said. “But a little less.”

“Less where?”

“Her eyes had no depth, and she didn’t smile once.”

“I know this story. Watch where you’re going.”

I skimmed past glossy pedestrians. Occasionally a face stood naked with childish moonlight. They were hostile.

“She was looking at something.” “Is she young? Is she a child?”

Alice Miao Fang

“Old enough to understand what she saw.”

The wooden rim that lined the cart’s gothic wind hole, worn, sleek with dark paint, damp with dew or sweat. Insect agony. She must have assumed, at first glance, that it was in pain. Its bejeweled head was tossing and gleaming. The delicate feet of fruit flies —those delicate feet, hard as steel, fluid, airy, were tremulous. We have zoomed in so close that the thing was no longer repulsive or beautiful. Its anatomy was a smudge in the black and white extremity. We have zoomed in so close that we could be seeing anything, the remnants of Dresden, the microscopic pulse of inferior underwater life, trees growing in slow motion, its bark crude and merciless. The monotone image, indecipherable, reeked with violent pleasure.

**

“Well,” said Marge as we walked out, “I don’t suppose anyone could find that very stimulating. Or am I out of touch?”

SPOTS KYLAFIGUEROA

English Major

Creative Writing emphasis, Prose

Spots

The cut of tongue, slices of breath. I am nineteen. Friday night. I thought my first party was supposed to be fun. It’s in my ex-roommate's, ex-boyfriend’s fraternity basement, a character itself washed by beer that spills on the floor and the tiny window at one corner of the room, fogged by everyone’s breathing. Bodies are squished on bodies, which are squished on more bodies that crowd around the DJ booth. He’s playing something from 10 years ago with a thumping drum kit, but I can not, for the life of me, tell you the song. It feels nostalgic, plugged somewhere in the back of my memory. Like the cans littered on the ground, bodies not dancing are littered against the wall. Some are in groups, with their friends, dressed in the same glittering sequins that reflect off the green and blue strobe lights.

Iridescent scales, I think to myself with glee, as I notice them over his shoulder, yards away. Like the rainbow fish. I wish I were here with my friends. They couldn’t go out tonight, but I think they would have liked the girls over there. Start a conversation, compliment their outfits over the loud music, and later laugh at my comparison to the childrens’ book character during our walk home. That’s so accurate, one would have said. I literally forgot that book existed, another would’ve said.

Maybe I’d be home by now if they were here and not studying for finals. They had said I was lucky for finishing all of my essays, free from school until the new year, and even took pictures of me in my black dress and thigh-high, leather and black boots. They said I looked fucking hot. “I wish I was as pretty as you, Clara,” said one of them. I can’t remember who, but I immediately denied the fact that she was less than. She was a perfect friend, one who laid flat on the ground, practically crushing her chest while her phone tilted up trying to get a good angle of my boobs and legs, to make them look long and big, she said. One hour later, the image they captured completely deteriorated from the humidity tearing my hair apart, and the sweat gathered at every crook of my body, and the fact that my dancing turned into sporadic movement reminiscent of an inflatable in front of a car dealership.

I don’t know how it happened. One moment I was in the middle of the dance floor, alone in my bubble of people, and then he came up next to me. I do remember his grin. To think that he had such pleasure in this, enough to flash a line of white teeth. That he made the same smile when he, one of the brotherhood, welcomed me into the house of AlphaKappaGammaBetaEchoElipson-whatever with the same smile, and poured jungle juice for a bunch of girls that lined up at the table, and watched me jump and move and scream from the DJ booths as he was practically grinding on his brothers, and after, dared to grab my wrist and take me after he fed me compliments

Kyla Figueroa

and more beer from his red solo cup, the same one he held as he innocently introduced himself after tapping on my shoulder. He invades my life with a “Hi.”

“You look fucking hot,” he says, towering over me while the knee between my legs pinned kept me there. I am stuck. I would collapse if he wasn’t holding my dress to the wall. It was already halfway off from the zipper, pulled-down and broken while his hand, from underneath the black skirt, pinned the waistline to the flag on the wall behind. It was the house’s pair of Greek letters on that flag, the whole place taking me in. I could not tell you if he was 6’2” or if his hair was blonde or if he had freckles, like me, that ran across his cheeks. Or if he played basketball at one of the dorm courts, the one along Escondido Road. I sometimes walk past, on my way to book club, and sometimes bend over nearby to pick a wildflower, never a poppy. Fuck, I could not tell you if his eyes were blue because I never actually saw him, never asked him anything, like if he even liked sports or if his favorite color was blue.

My head lobbed over, causing me to lean into him more, and he took it as a sign to press his leg deeper. He took more, starting at my neck. Too much saliva—he was spitting on me, and when he whispered in my ear with a burning stench to his breath, I wished I could run outside and go to the farthest, coldest place. Maybe plunge myself in the ocean at Half Moon Bay. See the rainbow fish.

“I never did this to a Mexican,” he said. He continued with it.

I was once seven. It was an age contained to the fingers I learned to count on. It was a regular summer that year: 110° filling the forecast in a “record-breaking” heat wave, the record breaking every year after that. Every neighborhood in Stockton filled with the scent of chlorine from every kid jumping into their inflatable pools, even with their clothes on, because they could not stand the weather. When I wasn’t in school, my mother and father would drop us off at our abuelitos’ house, telling us that they were “agricultural wizards,” whatever the first word meant. They’d always picked us up drenched in sweat and covered in a crusted layer of dust, passing a small green basket of strawberries to the backseat of my father’s old pick up truck. We munched while my mother said, “Your father cast a magic spell for those.”

It was magic alright. The way they seemed to run off to a far away land, where the magic strawberries grew and a kind wizard would grant my parents if they showcased their powers for his entertainment. They used their magic to ward off evil spirits, spells masterfully crafted like the ones that caused TV to change while I was looking down to play with my Polly Pockets. Or the spell that had lunch ready at 7:00 in the morning, before school—paper bags filled with Nacho Cheese Doritos, a chocolate chunk cookie from the night before, and a ham and cheese in clear wrapping. Or the one where the ball Eric and Tom, my brothers, kicked a soccer ball

Kyla Figueroa

over the fence, perfectly sat in the middle of the neighbor’s yard, and it would appear back in the house the next day, usually after my parents came back from work. What really happened was that John, the landowner two miles away from the house my grandparents, would make them use half of their earnings if they wanted to buy any of the fruit they just spent hours bent over into a triangle to pick it, only ever raising their hands up to pray to God that this all will end soon. The strawberries made us happy, so they insisted it was magic.

While they were off battling “The Dragon of Strawberry-Land,” we ran free on abuelos’ rented-property, their victorian house owned by one of the biggest grape distributors in California’s Central Valley, a landowner who made more money off bottles of alcohol than we could fathom. Freedom was in the rural, at least for three kids who just wanted to run through grape vines. On the day where the heat made our clothes stick to our skin, so much dirt that the beads of sweat fell down our legs like drips of brown paint, our grandfather, an expert handyman even back in Mexico, revealed that he had fixed three bikes for Eric, Tom, and I from thrown-out bike frames from a neighbor's estate sale. A tricycle for Tom, and two silver-painted bikes without training wheels. It was a gift, even if riding on gravel and powder meant that when Eric fucked up on his first attempt at a wheely and landed in his face, the tiny rocks piercing his face and forming constellations of streaks of blood and, later, scabs.

We met Spots’ mom first. On a morning walk with our grandmother, we wandered close to the landowner’s barn when a cat sprinted in front of us, not taking a second for us to reach for her on the dirt path. It was orange, and the only detail I caught of her was her sagging belly that she somehow did not stumble over. Tom, who was peeling a mandarin, threw a piece toward the hole in the barn’s boards that she scurried into. He was about to throw another when my grandmother caught his hand in the one not holding a coffee mug.

“Cat’s don’t like that,” she said in Spanish, letting go after it was clear the mother would not come out again. Then to all of us, “She’s feral. Do not mess with her.”

“Look what I found!” Tom screamed later that afternoon, when we decided to take a ride back to the barn. Despite his behavior earlier, he had known to break as hard as he could when he saw the kitten in his path. We reached him and he was fully submerged in the dust, holding Spots in a grip only possible for a four year-old while the cat screamed its head off. Mew mew. It tried to wriggle free but it was no use. Tom was oblivious, his grin wide and toothy, already ready to love Spots and shining in a way that guaranteed he could never be that happy again.

“Get off the floor!” I said, setting down my bike a couple of feet away. Eric followed closely, yards behind. I turned to him. “What is that thing?”

“It looks like a kitten,” Eric said. “You think that stray had babies?”

“Probably. It looks like it has fleas. Tom should put it down.” I looked back at Tom, who had it against his cheek and rubbed its graying fur into his skin. I groaned. “Put it down right—”

“I think it's better that he’s with Tom and not just on his own. Something could get it.” Then he laughed and walked over, reaching for the cat. He held Spots up to the sky like the kitten would be blessed by a god and squinted at him. “It’s weird that it turned out like that. I thought the mom was an orange cat. This cat looks like a cow.”

Nineteen. In my dream yesterday, Spots and I were the last survivors from California in a flooded world, living on flat wooden rafts bound with pieces of wood from trees that did not burn. Why? Probably from climate change. When he wasn’t pacing around the squared perimeter of the raft, Spots would nap in a large plastic tin tied to the raft while I would hunt or pluck seaweed from the water to dry out and eat or weave into clothes. The reason the tin was there was because, in the way that dreams do, it made sense. At night, we would feast on seafood and play with a stick on the raft, having so much fun to the point Spots had accidentally fallen into the ocean and I impulsively plunged into the icy water to save him, the raft luckily still there when we emerged.

“You okay?” I ask, knowing he could not speak English. His yellow eyes blinked in response. He did not even squeak despite the cold and shivering and his soaked hair looking like a drenched mop.

But one day, while fishing, I caught a big and meaty salmon, and when turning to celebrate with Spots, he was gone. Gone? Eaten by a shark? No, the remains of the tin would still be dangling off of the raft. The rope was gone and despite the sailor’s knot, it managed to detangle and unwrap, like a spool of string that rolled away. I immediately spiraled. I paced around the raft in the same way he did, but this time I was searching for something. And I couldn’t move anywhere else. How long had he been gone? Why was he nowhere to be seen? Why did I not see him begin to drift away? How far was he? Had I left him, passing by quickly and continuing forward until I was barely human and only a dot along the horizon? What would happen to him? What has already happened? And why was I screaming into the water like that would heal me, make him reappear in the ripples?

Kyla Figueroa

I am still nineteen. I woke up, my eyes heavy despite the 2 PM that flashes on the alarm clock across from my desk, and doing some quick mental math, I realized I slept for 12 hours. Everything was blurry, but for a second, it was just another Saturday. The birds chirped loudly, heard even with my window closed. Sunlight peeked in from under my window visor. Outside of my room, one of my neighbors arriving from somewhere was stopped in the hallway by another person leaving. Oh hey! How are you doing? I just got back from breakfast. Where are you off to? The world was alive, and for a second, I was too.

First the soreness settled. The muscles in my body tightened and what was once peaceful, like sleeping on a cloud, turned heavy, like a thunderstorm settled and started dropping buckets of water. I was entirely stiff, My bed turned into a slab of rock, and then I at once was rendered immobile, glued to my bed. It was like my body was restarting after being shut down for a century, and still, that wasn’t enough to give me energy. It was then I remembered: the flag, the letters, the beer, scales, and the way he caged me with his arms. I turned into my pillow, ready to cry or scream or let something get unleashed, but instead I stayed numb. I stared into the white, pillow case, and all the light became filtered, dimmer.

At that moment, I wished I could have a coffee. I hate coffee. I have hated coffee ever since I was a teenager. It was the sort of thing I was told I would grow into, when I needed it I would crave, but even in college I can’t do it. When I was sixteen, I wanted a milkshake but accidentally ordered a s’mores mocha because the bro-ista at Dutch Bros made it sound like the former. The graham cracker and whip cream invited sweetness, but the bitterness was so earthy I felt I was shoveling the asphalt that we were driving over into my mouth. When I couldn’t take the taste, it sprayed out of my mouth, with little tan droplets landing on the dashboard. I would have treasured it, savored all the drops I spat out. I would not have made my cousin drink it while we stopped at another Dutch Bros. to get me a lemonade because I am a baby and that’s what he called me while in the drive-thru and I said, “Shut up, you love your family,” and he smiled, taking turns between drinking his now two coffees, and said “Against my will,” and I poked his arm again.

When I first arrived at Stanford, 3 months ago, everytime I told someone I did not like coffee, it was like I told them I found a cure for cancer. How do you do it? How do you get up every day? I can’t even move without coffee in my system. And I would say, coyly, basking false moral supremacy as if coffee was a sin, “I don't know, water?”

It took three hours for me to drag myself out of bed this morning, and coffee was my only thought that sustained in my mind those three hours. Water, a full bottle on my bedside table, couldn’t do it. All I wanted was a coffee. I wanted the bitterness. The asphalt in my mouth, with all the rocks and dirt to choke on. It has promises.

Apparently, it saves lives, according to what people say. Even energized to help them get through Beowulf or Chaucer, or stay up all night to work on a paper. If I don’t do this assignment for twelve hours, it’s over for me. I need a coffee. Maybe it could save me.

“Why hasn’t anyone fed him?” I yelled toward the white screen door into the house. Even though Tom was inside, it was toward no one in particular. I was twelve, and I was in the middle of reading a John Green novel when I thought about Spots.

We were already old enough to stay home alone. Eric, who normally fed Spots on summer days, was spending the night with his friends, and Tom, now nine, found first-person shooter games and NERF guns more exciting than a pet.

So I closed it, my thumb in between the pages to mark my place, and headed outside. Sure enough, his bowl was empty and Spots, who, at 11 AM, already looked tired from the sun beating down. He emerged from the flower bed that he hid under, my mother’s collection of roses, lilac, and azalea shrub serving an fleeing attempt for shade. He padded over to me and meowed, which could only be translated to, Feed me! At five years old, he looked a lot less funny. His cow-like pattern was later explained by the Tuxedo pattern of his father. At four months, when we first adopted him, his ears were twice the size of his head, like a rabbit. Now, his lean and long body made his still large, but less comical ears make sense.

I reached down to pet him and he immediately gravitated towards me, pushing his head against my palm. “Sorry those meanies forgot about you,” I said to him. “I got you.”

After pouring kibble into his bowl, I sat with him in a lawn chair and began reading again. It was then Tom finally emerged from the house, dazed by the sun so much his hand practically was covering his eyes. He was paler than he had been for previous summers.

“Did you say something earlier?” he said, his voice as raspy as it did when he first woke up.

“Not important,” I said, eyes still on the book.

“Why do you read all the time?”

I looked up at him, flatly. That was a stupid question to me. “Why don’t you?”

“Because it’s boring,” he said, and he began walking out into the yard. Some silence and a couple of pages later and suddenly the sprinkler, already plugged into the hose that wrapped around the yard and unluckily a few feet from where we were sitting, sprayed us. I immediately closed my book while Spots meowed a yelp and ran back to the flowers. I looked up and Tom was running back and forth through it.

“You have got to be kidding me,” I groaned.

Kyla Figueroa

“What? It’s hot.”

“You’re not even wearing swim gear.”

“I don’t need it.” But he did: his white undershirt was already drenched, sticking to his skin and the sheerness exposing his torso. It was the same as wearing no shirt, but he wasn’t going to listen to me.

I timed the movement of when the sprinkler wouldn’t hit the cement patio and, it was clear, took the path Spots did, book in hand. He was back where he was earlier, under the flowers but his entire body stretched out and let the little breeze cool himself. I smiled down at him.

“Do you want me to read to you?” I asked. Of course he didn’t answer, but it didn’t stop me from sitting down on the dirt, cross legged, and letting him crawl onto my lap, fold in between the crooks of my legs perfectly. I read out loud. He would shed all over my shorts. I had to clean my clothes and shoes, muddy from the now wet yard. But that was long after Tom went inside to return to gaming, so long that I was pages away from finishing and Spots needed to be fed again. It was my way of making sure he was okay.

I am nineteen.

I am not okay.

I go to Walgreens.

I walk down the aisles, squinting at each sign detailing items broadly. I land on one: personal health.

I shuffle down, gaze shifting up and down, until I see what I am looking for.

I take the STI test without checking the price and head to the self-checkout line.

I scan the barcode and am clicking so fast the machine begins to lag.

It is still lagging.

The screen freezes.

A worker comes over to help, only to eye the one item I am purchasing and point to the empty cash register, all other self-checkouts in use.

The employee, who is beaming too much for it being midday during the holiday season, again judges my purchase.

I decided not to care.

I don’t care until he rings up the price and he asks if I want a bag, that it will be ten cents on top of the 90 dollars I owe.

It’s my fault, in some way or another, so I tap my card without showing hesitation. I head back to my dorm, ten cent bag and all in hand, and immediately b-line to the bathroom.

I enter a stall.

Kyla Figueroa

I don’t forget to put on the toilet seat cover, as if that can protect me from the grossness of it all.

I sit down, removing my pants and underwear.

I open the package, pull out the instructions, and begin to follow them while I skim the page.

I shudder when I have spread open my legs, and breathe.

I take another moment to open the package.

I stare at the swab.

I cringe when I have to insert it into me.

I am stiff.

I hate that I have to move it around in a circle to ensure the results are accurate, so the experiment can be complete.

I hate how hard the supposed soft and comfortable cotton is against my skin.

I hate it.

I stare up at the ceiling, where a small black spider crawls along the otherwise white tiled roof.

I am as empty of color as the tile around me, and I drop the swab into the tube. I pull my clothing back on.

I package it up, now hidden to everyone but myself. I get in my car.

I drive to the post office and drop it off at the counter. I get in the car, and take a deep breath, and I let loose.

I realize I forgot a pregnancy test and Plan B.

I am back at Walgreens.

I was sixteen. Spots are snuggled on in my lap while my parents are cooking dinner outside on the grill. Their affinity for American barbecue—beef patties, ribs layered and smothered in Kraft BBQ sauce, and charred asparagus—can only trace back to the dream they had when they first immigrated to California with their parents. Kids. A house. Subarus, flower beds, and a lawn to mow. A 9 to 5, where they would arrive in business casual and their co-workers would not mind their English and heavy accent. And barbecues, on the summer days where the temperature would not peek over one hundred.

We had many barbecues. This one was our first of that summer despite it being August. Our parents either could not miss a day of work because of the continuous harvest or it was just too hot. No in between. So this one was special where we brought out my mother’s boombox she got when she was fourteen years old, and our father found an old pack of UNO cards. All of us were outside, even Tom, who hated

Kyla Figueroa

family time at this point and would usually appear from his room when dinner was ready. There was something about that day, while the sun was still out at 8 PM, Eric finally learned how to shuffle cards correctly, so nobody was getting all the specialty cards like one game, and even Tom seemed a bit brighter.

“UNO!” my father shouted as he had one card in hand and most of his deck in the discard stack, or more like a discard pile in the way the cards messily gathered in the middle of the picnic table. Dad went back and forth between playing and or rubbing salt, lime or mustard into slabs of meat, flipping or placing food on the grill, or tossing a salad with caesar dressing. And despite our best efforts to keep him from winning, playing all our +2 cards and reversals and changing the color to red, blue, green, yellow, and back to red like our strategy mapped out, his strategy was being a father. He won eventually after two more times calling uno.

Another affinity for America my parents had was rock. Rock was a transcontinental genre and state of mind, already heavily present in Mexico to the point where they thought Abba and The Smiths only made songs in Spanish. (Or when they first heard it in English, they were dumb-foundws, eyes bright as they shouted, This is a Spanish song! It was popular everywhere, and I mean everywhere, in Latin America.)

Nevertheless, they eventually listened to The Smiths and Abba for real. They knew Bowie and Freddie Mercury, even Madonna and Michael Jackson. My mother, as she washed dishes, scrubbing her hands as dry as the desert, sometimes she’d ask me to play music on my phone, while I did homework at the kitchen table. At first, I had control of the playlist until she hijacked it, playing Fleetwood Mac and The Cranberries from the radio.

Suddenly from the boombox, a couple of indistinguishable chords came on and my mother gasped, holding her heart. “I love Stevie Nicks.”

Kyla Figueroa

Just like the white-winged dove sings a song

It sounds like she's singin'

Ooh, ooh, ooh

“You mean you love music for old people,” Tom said, rolling his eyes.

“It’s a good song. Just listen.”

“Why can’t you change the channel, it’s—”

Eric, who was eighteen and about to head to UCLA, slightly shoved him and played another card, +2 and Tom groaned, drawing his penalty. “That’s what you get,” Eric said.

“Well it’s a dumb song,” Tom continued, “The ooh thing sounds funny.”

“You only listen to the songs on NBA 2k, calm down.” Tom would have retorted, but he was only twelve. You never say anything clever or correctly during middle school, and it took years to be quick with a comeback. That freedom to be silly and young felt like a curse when you didn’t know things.

I sat there, nodding my head on the drum beat while Spots stayed asleep on my lap. Most of the time he was like that nowadays, sleeping the day away unless I was outside, which meant he was sleeping the day away clinged to me like a baby.

And the days go by like a strand in the wind

In the web that is my own I begin again

Said to my friend, baby,

Nothin' else mattered …

“What is this song about, Mom?” I asked, placing my last red card down.

“You didn’t say UNO!” Eric said, dapping Tom up.

I glared at him, drawing from another pile, while my mom answered, “I don’t know. I just like her voice. It’s pretty.”

Well, the music there,

Well, it was hauntingly familiar.

Father returned to the table, placing a blue one there with the same two as my red. “UNO. I remember hearing from a record store, back in the day, that it’s about death, or something sad like that.”

They were right about it being a pretty song and it being about death. When I later searched it up, I learned it was about reeling from two deaths simultaneously. That Stevie Nicks was grieving John Lennon and her uncle’s death within a week of each other. That the white-winged dove represents the spirit leaving the body, her imagining this death in two different ways for each figure in her life. Nicks’ voice is husky, like freshly picked corn, and the ooh in the song, the figurative dove, sounded like a procession of weeping. To Spots, who actually sounded like the birds were in our backyard as the song kept going. When he got up from my lap by the end of the

Kyla Figueroa

song and flung himself into the yard, as fast as a spring in motion, in search of the invisible doves, we could not help but laugh. I wish I were like Spots—always believing in what’s not there.

It was my dad who drunkenly revealed it all. I was eighteen. Spots was not there, probably sleeping on our couch when my parents could not shoo him off. My parents threw me a birthday-graduation hybrid party in my abuelito’s outdoor patio because I happened to be born in late May. The numbered candles were stuck in a black and white cake with a diploma and grad cap sticking out of it. When it was cut, people covered their slices with a napkin to prevent the dust clouds from getting all over it. People were still working in the fields, even on a Saturday. I watched the tractors raking through lines of wine grapes, wondering how my parents got the day off, when my father, who sat with elbow on the foldable table and his hand cupping his cheek, pointed at me. He waved me over. He was smiling stupidly, sat next to his brother, who also looked like his brain cells were pouring out of his ear. I would never call either of them that in any other circumstance, but there is no doubt that anything more kind would be a lie.

When he walked over, he handed me a cup full of beer, no foam. Warm. His pupils were wide. His face is red, like he was sunburnt, not drunk. He was gone, though. “For you. The one who saves us in Stanford.”

Since I was really an adult, one who, several weeks ago, accepted her spot at an elite university and was going to major in some sort of engineering, and get a big girl internship soon enough to send money back to her parents, I guess it was time to try beer. It was only right, especially after my father was the one giving it to me, and I could feel the glee beaming off my face. (Maybe it was just summer, and later I would have to scrub aloe vera into my cheeks from sunburn.) I could only imagine the way my smile fell off my face after we exchanged cheers, that once the drink hit my tongue, and I realized that there was nothing to alcohol other than to make you feel numb to pain. That its bitterness was warm and gross. That’s probably why I took the jungle juice in that frat house, because even if the real beer was topped with foam and delivered from a wooden handle, the delivery of my first beer sucked. I can remember that delivery, and it ruined everything else for me.

He passed me a napkin to wipe the foam and dribble off of my chin and said, “Remember the magic fruit? It was fake. All of it.”

“What?”

“The magic and dragon and all,” he said, pointing to the men rows over and yards

Kyla Figueroa

away from the puffs of dust the tractors were leaving. They bent over to pick up what the tractor weeded out, ensuring the crops would grow on even if it meant they would be sore from dragging their feet through the dirt all day and walking with their hands practically glued to their ankles.

“Oh,” I said, “I mean that makes sense.” I knew it was a lie once I was in middle school, when we first learned about organized labor and the UFW movement. I figured that the same tormented workers—the ones covered by large straw hats without a lick of sunscreen, so their skin tone in the black and white photos was always uneven—were the equivalent to my parents.

“And fuck that bastard, John Jimmy James, too for making me pay for the fucking strawberries,” he added. “I should have quit that job way before I did and gone to Delta. Trade school. Plumbing, or some shit. More money. ¡No puedo creer que haya sido tan estúpido!” And he clicked his beer can with his brother, who sat in a wheelchair (one that used to belong to their grandmother) next to my father because we ran out of plastic chairs. The tent rental was too expensive.

Finally, I am an adult. I make my way out of the school clinic that Saturday afternoon, ready for my life to return to the autumn term. The leaves outside are browning, ready to die with winter’s arrival, but the sun was out. I almost wish I chose a floral dress, something of linen and lighter instead of black denim jeans and sweatshirt. While it hid my body, I’m already sweating. The “Stanford” insignia, in its bold letters, branded my chest as I took my first few steps out of the clinic. Even as the sun was blinding me, though, I thought to myself, Maybe it will get better. If the weather could be fine in December, so can I.

And then my mother calls.

“Hello?” I say, immediately stopping and straightening my posture. I hadn’t even reported the incident to Title IX, wasn’t planning on it, but did she know? Did the police, who rammed their way up the driveway with flashing lights to shut down the party, had somehow seen me, missing my shoes and stumbling out with only one strap of my dress still on my shoulder? Tracked me down? Called my mother and explained their suspicions? Or did she have some sort of churning, twisting feeling in her gut that I wasn’t okay? I begin again. “Did you ever use the hashbrowns in the freezer? Last time I was home, I think they were almost expired.”

More silence, for just another moment. Then, my mom bursts into tears, revealing that Spots, at twelve years old, had passed away in his sleep, saying, “He was fine before he went to sleep. Just old. I am so sorry, I don’t even know what happened. I think he had heart problems, I don’t know. I just can’t stop crying.”

“Oh.”

“I’m sorry, again.” She blows her nose, the snorting blaring from the speakers and clipping the sound with static. “I am sorry,” she says, again. “Your dad found him. He wouldn’t wake up, even when he was shaking the bag of food.”

“Yeah,” I managed. I began walking again. Took another step. And another.

“So he went over to where Spots was laying and touched him. He was cold, Dad said. ‘That’s not right,’ I had said, and I went to check on him. I didn’t even cats could get cold with all of that fur—”

“Mmh.” I stepped on a crack.

“So,” she continued, “he nudged him a bit and he still would not up and we just knew that,” she released another sob, “he was gone. We’ve had him for so long and today has been so weird without him running around, between our feet when cooking or on the stupid couch, god, we should have let him sleep there—”

“Yeah.” I put my phone between the crook of my neck and jammed my key into my bike lock. It struggled back and forth, before opening with a click. My phone was back in my hand. Speaker on.

“I guess it was his time to go. Maybe he was in pain, and he went so peacefully in his sleep, so it’s better for him anyways, I guess. God, this sucks. I’m sorry. Your dad found a spot in the yard for him and I found a stone for his name. I painted it. We’ll make him a memorial. I’m so sorry you’re not here.”

“I am too,” I had said, and I dropped my lock to the floor, with the loudest clang that could have broken it, and I wanted to scream. “I have to go. I need to brush my teeth, and something else.”

“Pobresita, I am so sorry. Call me back in a bit. Let me know if you need anything. I’ll be there if I can tomorrow. We can do something. Spots loved you the most. You were his favorite kid. I hate that we can’t have him forever. I used to have a dog—” her voice began choking up, “and he made me wish that I could be a kid forever.”

We hung up. It is then that I finally collapsed, on the floor next to my bike and fallen lock, and let people walk by for brunch, them pretending to ignore my stare into the world, and let the cars pass by the clinic on the parallel street, unable to notice me below the brush, and let a soccer game go on across the street, or let myself watch the people cross the field in the middle of their game, returning from the pool with wet clothes and sopping hair, or returning from the ocean, where they saw the rainbow fish, and let a runner go by, maybe running from a dragon.

ARTBY BRIANAMAYTEEGARCÍA

English Major Creative Writing emphasis, Prose

Briana Maytee García

FORTMYERS BEACH LAURAGEQUELIN

Fort Myers Beach

Fort Myers Beach. That beloved tourist trap and the dream destination of every snowbird. You’re surprised at how easy it is to close your eyes and start imagining yourself walking along the shoreline, at how many good – and painful – memories you have there, and at how you truly didn’t know what you had until it was gone. In your mind, you can see yourself twelve years old in the backseat of your mom’s white Toyota Camry, looking up from a book when you notice that you are at the last traffic light before crossing the bridge to get onto the island. You sit up in your seat and look out the window as the car rises on the asphalt and you catch one of your favorite views you’ve ever seen: the open sky meeting the stretch of water under the bridge as buildings and shops show you the two spots of land. You’re astounded at how people carve out places from themselves in the midst of how grand and sweeping nature is. Humans can only live on land, and no matter how hard we try or how much we inhabit the earth, water still covers the majority of it. You think how small people are, yet so important. Your mom’s car starts to go down the bridge, and the thought fades away.

Fort Myers Beach is one section of a long island shaped somewhat like the mustaches that were popular in 2014. The bridge is the only way to get on the island, which means right at its base, there is a smattering of shops and restaurants, all painted vibrant shades of pink, orange, green, and blue to make sure every visitor knows they are on the beach and to make the most of this opportunity for profit. To access these shops and the part of the beach you guys like, your family first has to turn right after the bridge – your family never turns left at the bridge – and then, pass two stop signs before turning left into the parking lot managed by the county. The most stressful part of going to the beach is parking, second only to setting up the tent. You and your younger sister stay as alert as possible to help your dad try and find a spot, because he already hates the beach – he goes to appease your mother – and he already made the process of getting here unpleasant enough to almost convince your mother to give up. You find a spot and start walking towards the beach.

Every time you go to the beach with your mom, she asks if anyone would like to take a walk – she really asks, “alguém quer dar uma andada na praia?” – and you always peel yourself away from your book and off your towel to walk with her. She has a strong preference for walking to the right of the bridge. When you walk along the shoreline to the right of the pier, you are generally met with fewer people, which consist mainly of families and fancy old people who stay at the nicer hotels on that side. The sand is harder and darker down by the water but fluffier near the top of the sand where the buildings are. You step lightly to avoid shells in the sand and when

Laura Gequelin

your feet start to burn, you walk alongside your mom with your feet in the water. As you get older, your knee, hip, and ankle injuries start to flare up when you walk too long on the uneven sand. If you keep walking, you will eventually reach the beach at the end of the island where your parents had their vow renewal ceremony when you were ten years old.. You didn’t know you could reach the end of the island by walking until you were in middle school. Your mom must have known you wouldn’t be able to handle the walk back.

For your thirteenth birthday, you invited all of the kids in your honors classes to spend a day at that beach. Your mom sets up the beach tent to the right of the pier and you are all hanging out in the water. It’s from the Gulf of Mexico, so the water is warm and calm. There are rarely any waves and you can usually walk about 100 feet into the water before it reaches your chest. Like many other thirteen year olds, you have crushes on different boys at the same time, but that year in eighth grade, a crush from fifth grade had returned to wreak havoc on your life, so you started liking Alex C again – also known as Air Conditioning #1 to you and your friends. While playing truth or dare, Alex was dared to slap your butt, and since you were already slightly feminist at that age, you are disgusted by the idea; in the moment, he refuses. While walking out of the water, you admire the view of the hotel buildings that line the shore. They are smaller than the ones on the east coast of Florida, but you still imagine what fancy people might be staying in these hotels. Unbeknownst to you, Alex C has decided to reverse his refusal and runs towards you, lunging forward to smack your butt as you walk. You are enraged, but you also hope to God that your mom did not see what just happened. At the end of the day, you wait by the boardwalk for all of your friends to get picked up by their moms in big SUV’s. You and your mom walk across the concrete painted shades of green and purple to Kilwin’s, the ice cream shop next to the Greek restaurant you used to go to with your family on fancy dinner nights before watching the sunset on the beach. You order some form of chocolate ice cream and you walk towards the pier with your mom and your sister.

That pier is the one place you have yet to walk in your mind. It’s the place you can never walk again, because on September 28, 2022, Hurricane Ian ravaged Fort Myers Beach, destroying in its path the pier you used to watch the sunset off of and the island you used to know. You heard about the hurricane from your family, who were already leaving the city for a wedding in Dallas. At least, all of you had to experience the storm from far away. Your home was fine, your garage was flooded and your cars destroyed, but what ached your heart most were all the drone videos you saw on Instagram of Fort Myers Beach. Worst of all is when you do finally go home the second weekend of October, your family decides to drive to the island and see the

Laura

Gequelin aftermath. Your new boyfriend is sitting in the car next to you and so is your sister. You look up again to see that you are at the last traffic light before the bridge. As the car climbs the concrete, – this time, it’s a black Toyota Camry – you see that view again, but when you look forward, you see water where water shouldn’t be. In the streets where there used to be colorful shops and homes, there are now piles upon piles of debris, palm trees laying horizontally, and the pier is gone. The car goes down the concrete. Your family turns left at the bridge.

MY PLAYGROUND HARPERHUMMELT

My Playground

The playground of Ainsworth Elementary school is never empty, but today it is. Usually, the 4th and 5th graders take over the turf field – lying belly up pointing at which cloud looks like a duck and which one looks like a toilet seat. And usually the monkey bars are a battle scene – the 2nd and 3rd graders competing for spots to see who can skip not two but three bars. The jump ropes lie forgotten in the four square courts – covering chalk drawings of stick figures and attempts at a,b,c’s. Basketballs have rolled to the far corners of the playground, hidden under piles of leaves and items destined for the lost and found. Even the squirrels seem wary of the normally bustling play area. They maintain their distance – spying stray acorns from behind the fence rather than scurrying across the turf to blacktop and back to the play structure.

It’s gray but not gray for Seattle. A break in the clouds shows a glimmer of blue sky. Instead of ducks and toilet seats the kids would spot one large blob of fluff (likely they’d refer to it as poop). The slight breeze sends rustling through the maple trees and the occasional large gust sends a swoosh through the soldier-like douglas firs. The kids had names for these trees but now no one would know. They’d just be trees. Trees surrounding an elementary school they failed to protect.

It’s Monday, and it’s not a holiday. It’s April, so it can’t be Memorial Day. Not Labor Day either. Definitely not President’s day and surely not a teacher-work day; they had one of those last week. The kids should be here, but they’re not. The playground should be filled, but it’s not. The flag waves proudly from the top of the flagpole – the red, white, and blue casting a shadow over the tetherball courts. Eerily, the bright, yellow balls circle the poll – pushed by the wind or by invisible sticky fingers of forgotten children. Rain jackets sway – hung carelessly over monkey bars – like ghosts mimicking children’s careless swinging, skipping two and sometimes even three bars.

Neighbors wince as they walk past the school. They shield their eyes and quicken their pace. Dog walkers cross the street abruptly before they reach the beginning of the school zone – yanking curious pups away from the tempting leftovers and spilled snacks of elementary schoolers. On Elm street neighbors look down on the playground – a birds eye view of the sunken blacktop and turf. On Vista, a block below Elm, the high walls block the neighbor's view of the scene. The walls, at least 10 feet high, are covered with graffiti, drawings, and messages in remembrance of

Julia Reiman. At ground level, the wall is covered in chicken scrawl – attempts at hearts, angels, and ‘we miss you.’ The higher you looked, the more advanced the artwork and writing. At the top, a message accompanied with a symbol centering around the number 43, read “Forever in our hearts, Julia Reiman, beloved daughter, sister, friend, and student – 1998 - 2007.”

I grew up a block from Ainsworth Elementary school. I spent kindergarten through 5th grade immersed in those vine covered brick walls. Ainsworth wasn’t just my school, it was my neighborhood – an extension of my backyard. And at that age, Ainsworth wasn’t just my school, it was my entire life; my community – everything and everyone I knew stemmed from Ainsworth. I spent weekend nights looking at stars with my dad and sister from our secret spot (the flat rooftop of the portable classroom). He’d lift us up and give an extra boost as we cleared the railing. Week nights and afternoons were spent tearing up the turf field – playing flag football with the older boys, attempting cartwheels and handstands with my neighbors, and practicing give-and-go’s with my dad for hours.

I skinned my knee for the first time there – holding back tears while I patted at the blood with my ripped purple leggings. My first kiss, the time I peed my pants I laughed so hard, covered up my cough as I hit Mason’s blue raspberry juul, and where I got so high I couldn’t walk the two blocks home – instead curling up at the center of the turf field, my body covering the 43, and waking up confused as a my little sister shook me awake. I grew up. But Ainsworth never did. And neither did Julia.

I don’t remember the funeral nor do I remember reading the news reports of the crash. I don’t remember the KATU and KGW trucks flooding the neighborhood –blocking the front entrance to school. I don’t remember the ribbon cutting for the memorial turf field. I don’t remember my mom’s tears or my dad’s tighter and longer hugs as he dropped us off for school. I just remember everything felt gray – the weather, the people, my teachers, my soccer coach – and everyone was sad. But I didn’t know why.

All I remember is that one day there was no tuf field and the next there was. And I remember before the gray my parents let me and my sister walk to school alone but after they always accompanied us the two blocks.

INTERMEZZO NADIAEUGENEJO

I am stealing my mom’s perfect pitch from her.

A whirring black-gray air purifier in the car coffee holder makes me blurt out –“Mom, what’s that note?” I always know the answer already, and I patiently wait for her response.

She thinks for a while. “B?”

“No, it’s a B flat.”

She laughs one annoyed “ha” and waves her hand.

It wasn’t always like this. 10 years ago, our answers matched. I inherited her perfect pitch, but her grasp on this is slipping. When I play this game with her now, her answer is usually a half step or whole step away from the correct pitch. I feel the satisfaction of victory for a moment, then I grow silent and dejected.

Our church’s pastor is one of the most famous pastors in South Korea. My mom told me that he sat down with her a few years ago and said, “Almost every prayer request that people come to me with – when I pray for them, it comes true. There was only one that I prayed for a few years and it went nowhere. You becoming a piano professor.”

I don’t know what spurred him to confess this to her. He is bringing up a failure from 20 years ago – does he feel a sense of responsibility that still plagues him? When my mom tells me this story, she has a sarcastic smirk, an acceptance of the farcical, on her face. But I don’t know what face she made in front of the pastor at that first revelation.

People talk about soccer moms, but they don’t know that classical music moms exist. She drove me 14 hours to Indiana University nonstop and rented an apartment there for 1 month in case a crisis happened to her 13-year-old daughter during this music camp. She drove me from Western Massachusetts to Upstate New York’s Adirondack Mountains, complaining about all the gravel on the trails up to my cabin at the Meadowmount School of Music. She told me later that her body was so broken down from all these hours sitting in a car that her back would ache and she couldn’t feel her legs anymore. When I performed at Carnegie Hall for 5 minutes, we stayed at a hotel in New Jersey and lugged my cello onto a bus. In the green room behind the

Intermezzo

Nadia Eugene Jo

concert hall, she fidgeted nervously just like I did – I imagine she didn’t anticipate that her Carnegie Hall debut would be as an accompanist for her middle-school-aged daughter.

I was born in Korea a few months after my mom earned a Doctorate in Music at the University of Illinois. She tells me that after coming back to Korea, her career suffered. She was unlucky with teaching positions at music universities. Despite relentless networking, lecturing for free, flying over to Jeju Island to be a guest lecturer and get her foot in the door of that university, countless applications, and desperate prayers from our pastor and my grandma, no position really stuck. When I was 7, our family moved near Washington D.C. for my dad’s job, and my mom had to follow an irrational rule that wives of diplomats must not have a full-time job. She relegated to teaching elementary school students and beginner adults in her free time. The mountains of sheet music in our house became artifacts – her meticulous annotations merely a decorative touch.

My mom once performed as a soloist with an orchestra at the largest concert hall in Korea. Now she volunteers to play accompaniments to well-known hymns at our 7:40am church service. When she thumbs through Beethoven sonatas or Schumann solo pieces, some of which advanced high schoolers can tackle, she is clumsy, slow.

My mom chose the cello for me to play because the timbre and the range of notes are closest to those of the human voice. I started playing cello when I was 6 years old, and playing it came to me naturally; my mom signed me up for music competitions almost right away, and I started winning prizes from age 8.

Two pieces opened the gateway to discovering cello as a passion, not just an obligation to show up to: Brahms Cello Sonata No. 1 in E minor and Saint-Saens Cello Concerto No. 1 in A minor. I was moved by the profundity, melancholy, grandiosity, and lyricism of the pieces. I felt a need to improve so I could nail these notes and dazzle onstage as a confident soloist.

Excited by my sudden love for music, my mom made a daring leap towards a commitment that would define most of our lives for the next two years: driving me to the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, 2 hours away from our house, twice every week. To match the rigor of Peabody, I painstakingly built up the discipline to practice nearly 2 hours every day. My free time was suddenly populated with Wikipedia

Nadia Eugene Jo

reading time to study canonical works of classical music. I became friends with other classical music fanatics, trying to out-wit each other by playing 3-second snippets from obscure music and making each other guess the piece. Still, I refrained from telling my friends or teachers that I had perfect pitch. I only wanted to compete with people who shared my ability. I wanted to keep it a delicate, secret topic between myself and the person who passed on perfect pitch to me: my mom. She had a doctorate in music and taught me everything there is to know about how to behave at competitions, how to keep my cool even if I make mistakes in a performance, how to embody confidence and leadership so I can move up the chairs in orchestra, and how to emphasize emotions and expression over technical mastery. And our parents were supposed to be trailblazers, people who had set the standard for excellence high for us, right? She must still be at that level – right?

* * *

My mom practiced so hard for church piano accompaniments. She would ask me endless questions on what ending or transition sounded best. We experimented with various chord cadences and endings and grace notes. She asked me so many questions.

I found myself repeating:

“People are not gonna notice.”

“They’re not gonna know.”

It was meant to be comforting, to let her know it’s okay if she didn’t make the perfect choice. But I was also telling her no one really cared about her playing.

On these Sunday mornings when she performed, she had to get up at 4am to do makeup, pick out an outfit that was beautiful but not too flamboyant for a holy gathering, curl her hair, drive to church, and play a rushed impromptu rehearsal with the singer. The camera for the service only showed my mom at two moments: the 5-second piano intro, and a brief instrumental transition in the middle of the song. The applause thundered for the singer, of course. When the service ended, my mom undammed her barrage of questions: “Did I look bloated? The camera zoomed in on me right when I made all the mistakes. Did you notice? You know we weren’t together at the ending, right? He was rushing so much!” Occasionally, my dad and grandma told her that she did well. It seemed like a rehearsed response. I opted for silence instead.

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Once, I scavenged around my mom’s bookshelf until I pulled out a thick bound book of white pages. I opened it up to find my mom’s doctorate dissertation on Vincent Persichetti. Despite spending most of my middle school years reading Wikipedia pages about classical music, I have never come across that composer’s name outside of her dissertation. I knew doctorate students in every field had to zoom in on a hyper-specific topic, but this obscurity of the composer felt especially sad to me.

My mom frequently tells me she is proudest of the time she was a college student –when she pursued an ambitious goal, when she toiled every day to improve, when she boxed herself in a practice room for 14 hours one day. She nonchalantly recalls a story of practicing the devilish Liszt Mephisto Waltz No.1 so much that her fingers bled.

She created music until I happened. Her years of typing away a dissertation in a language she learned in her 20s, her crying and pleading with professors to edit her writing as her graduation date slid further and further into the future – I do not know what that effort has led to.

There is a distracting hum in the room we are sitting in. It is an invitation for me to make another sly grin. I say, “What note do you think that is?”

She groans. She asks, “Seriously?”

“What do you think it is?”

She refuses to answer.

My mom told me often, “Whenever you meet a new cello teacher, make sure you mention your mom is a pianist and studied with Ian Hobson at UIUC. Then, they won’t be able to neglect you as a student or look down on you.”

My mom was my rock. A silent guardian in the shadows. Even if she wasn’t able to perform to reap glory for herself, her degree and the hard work leading up to it gave me this protection in my own burgeoning life as a cellist.

Even as her perfect pitch falters over time, she can always identify a piece by Brahms. Last fall, I grew especially obsessed with Brahms Piano Concerto No.2, and

Nadia Eugene Jo

no matter what snippet of it I played aloud, my mom could recognize Brahms’s signature harmonies and infinite layers of warmth.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a stuffed bunny hanging from my room’s door knob. When I pull on the bunny’s legs, the bunny’s torso stretches out like an accordion, and twinkles and chimes float out from its belly. My mom told me that she used to stretch that bunny’s torso out to play me the melody when I was a newborn baby.

Whenever I had a bored moment when I was about to walk through the door, I pulled on the bunny’s legs. Over the years, I eventually memorized the notes. I only realized in high school – it was the Brahms lullaby. A prayer for her baby to relish all the opportunities that were cut short for her. Hope that the baby will carry on a love for music, not only for the mother to live vicariously through her but so that the baby will appreciate the vast world of music for her own good. Watching over her cradle, protecting her with her love. Nurturing her with the language she knows best, in the language that is most capable of conveying the mother’s love.

LEFTLEAVES AUTUMNJONES

Left Leaves

Oh, in autumn I change, and change, and change And I smile because the change feels good. Every morning I’m delighted by the crisp air that brushes my cheek, And the fresh dew that gently rests on my arms.

It’s not until winter when I am bare, And shivering, with tears in my eyes, that I feel sadness, For all the leaves I left behind.

But with spring comes hope— And hope precedes growth. For I know I’ve changed, but I didn’t do all of this to stay the same.

In the golden hours of summer, it’s nothing but a jubilee, Because I’ve found new leaves that grew along with me.

But even then I feel a sadness with every blowing breeze, because the memories come to mind, and I can hear the screams and pleas Of all the leaves I left behind.

Leaves, just one part of me, and to let them go was to let me grow. Yet, it wasn't until they fell that I felt how much I loved all the leaves I left behind.

UNPRECEDENTED TIMES:ANOVEL CHAPTER1

MALAVIKAKANNAN

Malavika Kannan

Unprecedented Times: A Novel Chapter 1

Listen: I am not ungrateful. I have always known that I am the luckiest girl on earth. I was born in America, for starters – and I was even born at all. Right after she had me, my mother started having fertility problems, which means I am her only baby, only hope. (I feel the pressure like a life jacket sucked around my ribs. Sometimes I wish she could kill and reincarnate me again, just for a second try to get things right.)

It helps, of course, that I was born in a century where women could read, earn money, take pills for depression, and feasibly become just as powerful and evil as men, if we were motivated enough. If I was born just a century earlier, I would be illiterate, married with kids by eighteen. A century later, and the world will be choked up with greenhouse gas. But I got to attend college for the main purposes of reading books and kissing girls. Women used to get burned at the stake for that shit! My timing couldn’t have been better.

Most of my good fortune is thanks to my parents. They, too, were lucky, graduating from college at just the right time to win the lottery of immigration, finding wellpaying IT jobs abroad. They were part of a sea of brown people rolling the dice in America– and they nearly lost it all. When I was eight months old, my dad had a conference in New York City. Due to flight delays he didn’t reach the Twin Towers on time. That day, both buildings went down in flames, blown up by an another, unrelated group of suicidal brown people. My dad should’ve died, but he didn’t. (Later, my lover Kavya jokes that some people have plot armor: convenient unkillability because the story can’t happen without them.) So I know a thing or two about beating the odds.

I am thinking a lot about these things – luck and providence, parents and dying, the year I start college. It is my idiot year, my plague year, my pizza-crust year of odd ends and beginnings, and I remember it only more clearly as time passes. It is a year that asks questions, to quote my favorite novel. I am still waiting on some of those answers.

On move-in day, my parents and I fly across the country and then drive to Stanford University. It looks less like a school than a high-end resort. The three of us crane our necks at the rows of palm trees lining the roads. They stick out of the ground like toothpicks, towering and vaguely fascist. Somewhere I read that palm trees are not

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actually native to Palo Alto. They were transplanted hundreds of miles just for the aesthetics, like me. Dad takes selfies outside the Mission-style church and Mom tries to pick fruit off the ample bushes. I wish they’d cool it with the immigrant behavior.

Reading my mind, Mom smiles. Didn’t I tell you, Rishi? she says. When I first moved to this country I lived in Palo Alto. On weekends I’d walk around Stanford and dream I was a student here. And now here I am, dropping off my daughter. God is good, no?

God’s a real one, I agree. I’ll do my best to live your dream.

That is a lie, of course. I’ll say it upfront: I am not trying to live my mother’s dream. Some days I’m not sure if I want to live at all. Not in a self-loathing, suicidal sense — I’m not a skinny white girl, I don’t have that luxury. I mean that at age eighteen, I’ve already concluded that most things life has offered me (high school, activism, capitalism, hard work, electoral politics, my parents’ entire American Dream) are shameless, jaw-dropping scams, and I want no part of them. But I am hopeful I can find a better way to live, a more artful and generous one.

On the flight that morning, I told my parents I was going to become a writer in college, both to temper their expectations and to try it on for size. The only problem is that until very recently — a few months before, to be exact — I was a legal, honestto-God child. I haven’t fallen in love or done hard drugs yet, two formative experiences I suspect Real Writers possess. In college I intend to get my heart broken, literarily and expeditiously. I will be unspooled, rescued, smashed-up, burned-out. All this will happen, and I will come to understand.

Google Maps leads us to a bookstore and a Jewish cultural center before it takes us to my dorm. To make the freshmen feel included, the RAs have memorized all of our names — or so I think, until the smiling senior handing me my welcome packet says with his full chest, Welcome, Roshini! My heart gives an involuntary jump of recognition. I accept the packet, and my new identity, without question. But then Mom leans in and says, That’s the wrong one. Her name is Rishika.

Oh shit, the RA says. I mean, my bad. I’m so sorry, Rishika. We’re still learning folks’ names! He switches out the packets. I understand that I haven’t entered a parallel universe, I’ve just been mistaken for another freshman. Across the hall, I notice a massive map with push-pinned photos marking all the residents’ hometowns. My own tiny face glares back at me, hung like a ballsack on the Floridian peninsula. I look away.

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What is there to say about my hometown? In Okeechobee I often felt, to borrow my mother’s expression, like a big fish in a small pond, except the pond was actually a swamp and the other fish were actually racist alligators. I hated Okeechobee, and Okeechobee hated me. Truly, the kindest thing I can say about Okeechobee is that it instilled in me a desire for revenge. (I suspect that desire drives any gay person who grew up in suburbia.) In Florida, those with social currency had spray-tans and football boyfriends, far from the intellectual pedigrees and inherited companies that distinguish the Stanford elites. If high school was the Little Leagues, Stanford is the motherfucking ball game.

My double is across the communal bathroom, which Mom approves of. People will be coming this way all the time, she says, so it will be easy for you to make friends.

Mom is very excited about the prospect of me befriending Stanford students — hearty kids with strong SATs from whom I will gain, perhaps by osmosis, a sense of drive, or a computer science degree. On the plane, when I told her I was just Here For The Plot, she hissed. You can write all your story-gories later, Rishi, she said, with a demeaning double-rhymed flourish. Right now, you worry about finding some ambition. And a job.

We open the door, and that’s when I first see Georgia Becker. Fate, or more likely a Stanford algorithm, has assigned her as my random roommate. Her parents are bespectacled epidemiologists at the University of Maine, both Stanford alumni themselves. My dad, like me, distrusts most white people, but I think he likes that they are intellectuals. The grown-ups gravitate together to exchange pleasantries, leaving me to chat with Georgia.

You’ve got to teach me to do my eyebrows like yours, Georgia says. She has orange hair, horse-big teeth, and a camp counselor enthusiasm that is momentarily endearing, but I fear will get grating. I promise her I will. I don’t want to give her any reason to kill me in my sleep.

The welcome packet includes introductory placards for us to fill out and hang on the door. According to Georgia’s placard, she is from Bangor, Maine, an environmental engineering major, and a Taurus. The last section is titled, Ask me about ______! You are supposed to list out your personal interests as conversation starters. Georgia’s list is lengthy: Infrastructure. Trains. Vegan tacos. The great state of Maine. Nature. The Green New Deal. Women’s Soccer. White Allyship. Sustainability. I have an inkling

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that we might have been matched as roommates because of our shared interest in, or perhaps fear of, death by climate change.

Georgia wants me to fill out my placard, too, but I have no idea what to write about myself that might catch someone’s eye en route to the communal bathroom. Ultimately I decide to keep it short but sweet. I like stories of all forms — novels, movies, confessions at 2 AM, I scribble. Should I have said books instead of novels? Too late, I used a Sharpie. I add Bubble tea addict to humanize myself. Then I let Georgia hang the placard up before I can agonize further.

The Beckers offer to help us unpack — since we’ve already got the lay of the land, Georgia says heartily. This produces some complications, as the shoebox room is not meant for six adults, two mini-fridges, four large suitcases, and a mountain of boxes, but we manage. Georgia helps the dads lug things up and down the stairs. I am always impressed by girls who can hold their own with grown men. Meanwhile Mom and I get into a fight. It turns out Mom packed a handful of Hindu god figurines from our family shrine at home, and she wants me to display them on my desk, right between my Ikea lamp and brand-new birth control pills. Expecting my resistance, she’s waited until the last minute to spring them on me.

I’m not keeping those, I say. You know I’m not religious.

Do it for Amma, she insists. Mom always refers to herself in third-person when guilting me. Pattu, I had them blessed by a priest.

People will think I’m a Hindu nationalist. I won’t make any friends.

If you don’t make friends, it’s because of your posture. Your slouch is unwelcoming. As a compromise, I agree to keep only one figurine on my desk. You can even choose which, Mom says generously.

Which one’s this? I say, pointing to the one that appears to have breasts. Mom says it is Annapurna, goddess of food. Not bad, I think. There is something kind of subversive about it, reclaiming the traditionally feminine burden of nourishment. Maybe girls will ask me about it when they come to the room to hook up.

I want her, I say.

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Suddenly suspicion crosses Mom’s face. You only chose her because she’s a girl, ha, Rishi?

That’s not true, I lie. Are you telling me I can only worship men?

Luckily Georgia returns, interrupting us. It is time for the parent send-off. We file downstairs into the cavernous common room, the joint delegation from House Kumar-and-Becker. It’s my first time seeing the entire dorm population in one place. It’s bizarre to think that once the parents disperse, we’ll be on our own, like the ensemble cast of some island survivor show. I scan the room, trying to predict who will go feral first.

My parents are eyeing the crowd, too. I know who they are looking for: brown people. According to the admissions brochure, twenty point five percent of the freshman population is Asian American. There are about a hundred of us in the dorm, so it stands to reason that twenty and a half of us are Asian. I try to count us off in my head. I try not to picture what the ‘half’ is.

You should go talk to her, Mom says, pointing out a tall Indian girl near the pool table. The girl is wearing horn-rimmed glasses — a bold choice. I ditched my own glasses in favor of contacts after some jerk boy called me Mia Khalifa in the seventh grade.

The Indian girl catches my eye and smiles. Irrationally, my insides clench. If this was a novel she’d be Roshini, my preordained nemesis, my foil, and one of us would have no choice but to kill the other in a climatic duel at the end of the year.

Do you know her, Rishi? Georgia says brightly, startling me: I forgot she was here.

Nope, I say. A silence spreads between us, and I predict correctly that Georgia will break it first. Well, I don’t know anybody either. Except you, of course. She grins. Should we sit? I think the presentation’s starting.

We find seats and watch the RAs deliver a combination information session / standup routine about the impending next stage of our lives. Your freshmen are in safe hands, they declare. We won’t let them do hard drugs …. alone! The parents laugh at all their jokes, an easy audience. One RA announces there is a grief counselor onsite for students struggling with homesickness. Mom touches her heart at this, and I am

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startled to see tears in her eyes. Maybe she secretly hopes I’ll be one of the students who needs counseling. To her, it would be proof that I love her so much. She’s the person who taught me to love like that. Wretchedly, pathologically, so deeply that it hurts.

After the presentation, markers are passed out so parents can write parting notes for their children on the floor-to-ceiling whiteboard. When the parting moment comes, it is quick and tearful. I want to shake off my parents quickly, pretend I gave birth to myself — college is about me, not them. Predictably Mom weeps, and Dad tries to take it like a man, but soon he is crying too. I do my best to stay dry-eyed, but after everyone leaves, I race to the whiteboard to see the note Mom left for me.

Dear Rishi, she wrote. We are so excited for you to experience all that college has to offer. I know things were not always easy at home, but we hope you can find strength in where you came from. Love, Amma and Appa.

She’s written our names in Tamil for privacy, perhaps overestimating my bilingualism, but the gesture moves me nonetheless. I can’t help it, I start to weep. Of course I do! I’m not hard-hearted.

HOWDOYOU BECOMEA WRITER?

JAREDKLEGAR

Jared Klegar

English Major Creative Writing emphasis, Prose

How Do You Become a Writer? from Catapult, published August 18, 2022.

You want to be a writer, or at least that’s what you tell your parents, your friends, your distant relatives, your inquisitive neighbors, the chatterbox sitting next to you on the plane home from college, the pediatrician you still see despite being twenty years old, your professors, your partners, yourself. What can you say? It’s been your dream since ... well, since a year ago, but no one needs to know that.

For most of your life, you have not been writing creatively. In this regard, you differ from many of your writer friends. In seventh-grade English, Tobi was tasked to write a two-to-four-page story and emerged with an eighteen-page draft. In high school, Katherine wrote a seventy thousand–word dystopian spy novel, and Lydia published poems and won awards. Emma wrote Alice in Wonderland fan fiction; Miranda wrote The Outsiders fan fiction; Evelyn wrote friend fiction, à la Tina Belcher and Lexi Howard. You, on the other hand, didn’t write anything during your K–12 stint that wasn’t an assignment for school.

Granted, you’ve recently stumbled upon some short stories you wrote before kindergarten—titles like “The Mean Parents,” “The Great Cat,” “Girl Thing”—so perhaps you were always fated to return to writing. Shirley Jackson just had an early story of hers published posthumously, and you wonder, in exceeding delusion, if your pre-K scribbles might also be of interest to the general public one day. You enjoy looking at Picasso’s childhood sketches, for instance, though, of course, those were good, whereas “Girl Thing” contains lines like “Ooh la la, said the girls girly.”

You like being delusional because, in the shitshow that is trying to forge a career in writing, it’s practically the only thing that keeps you calm. To be an aspiring writer, after all—or, you should say, a writer, full stop, no qualifications; if you write, then you are a writer, or so you’ve been told—is to be caught up in a maelstrom of contradictory advice. At readings and literary events, invariably someone asks, “What would you tell an undergraduate who wants to be a writer?” You lean in, eager to soak up any new insights you can. But these insights usually end up being platitudinous (“Trust your voice!”) or sobering (“Be ready to work as a waiter!”) or frustratingly simple (“Read widely!”). Still, you take notes.

You’ve attempted to reconcile these morsels of wisdom and found yourself knotted in paradox. Major in English, you’re counseled, to be exposed to a broad array of literature, but, on second thought, maybe don’t, so you have another body of knowledge to draw from and write about. Ignore the pressures of social media and focus on your craft, but good luck nabbing a book deal if you don’t know how to brand yourself for the market. There’s no need for an MFA, say the successful writers

whose trajectories you’d like to emulate, who, naturally, all have MFAs.

So. You’ve learned that writing is a feasible career option, and you’ve decided that you are going to pursue it. But the more serious your pursuit, the more entangled you feel. The delusions evaporate; the facts of life, salty and stubborn, endure. And you’re left thinking to yourself: Is a career in writing really all that feasible?

You ask your writer friends how they’re preparing for a writing career. By writing, they say. And reading. Most of them, like you, are English majors. Miranda, Evelyn, Jo, Alex, and Eva declared early in their first year. Siobhan tried math, Lana flirted with mechanical engineering, Isabelle gave ecology a go, but they all came back to writing. Sarah was fully on the biology track, until she realized that the nature of her curiosity in the subject diverged drastically from that of her premed peers.

“I have no interest in curing the sick,” she tells you. “I hope they get better! I just don’t want it to be my job. I want to understand why they’re sick and how they feel about it.” She has since switched to English.

You are in constant crisis about your English major. You’ve thought about a psychology double major, an Italian minor, an anthropology master’s—for no other reason than English not feeling like enough. At a party, a fratty-looking guy asks what you study, and when you say “English,” your voice is lower, more forceful than usual.

“That’s sick, bro,” he says, face twitching. He is making too much of an effort to be enthusiastic.

You would not consider your career prospects “sick,” nor would your friends consider theirs. In discussions you have with them about the utility of your English degrees, the same words appear and reappear: “hireable,” “unemployed,” “rent.” You hear “health insurance” a few times, but that’s not exactly what Frat Guy means by “sick.”

Even so, you are not fatalistic. You do things. You write for the campus paper, like Lana, Kyla, and Siobhan. You apply for and receive university grants, like Jo, Sarah, and Tobi. These things—clips, cash—are undoubtedly useful.

But most of the opportunities available to you seem more administrative or editorial than writerly. You could be a managing editor of the school paper, like Kyla; intern at a literary magazine, like Isabelle; work at a literary agency, like Morgan— and feel that you are moving toward something. But is that something being a writer? Certainly it benefits your own work to read and provide feedback on others’. Certainly it doesn’t hurt to network. (Network? Who are you, Frat Guy?) What, though, of buckling down and actually writing?

There are careers in which you would buckle down and actually write. Of these, journalism strikes you as the most stable . . . is a sentence you should not have to write, but, surveying the literary landscape, you’re not convinced of its falsehood. And, as it happens, Kyla and Siobhan are gravitating toward reporting, toward the relative clarity of newsroom internships and staff-writer positions. It’s a path littered with potholes, absolutely, but there are streetlights leading the way.

Writing for screen, in an era when the film and TV industries are booming, looks promising too. You attend a panel: college students talking about the entertainment internships they’ve done. You definitely don’t need connections to make it in the biz, they say, then proceed to mention the aunts and family friends and pastors who helped them obtain their posts. Should you be mad about the sophistry or grateful for the transparency? Who knows! Besides, even if you’re lucky enough to slink in connectionless, you see way more listings for production and development interns than full-on writing jobs; this summer, Eva and Andrew are doing the former. Getting a foothold in a bona fide writers’ room might prove difficult.

As for writing fiction, poetry, memoir—you’re not sure if there is a path to follow. At any rate, you think of this path, if it exists, as an old, wobbly bridge over a gap between two cliffs. You’ve heard of various approaches to crossing this bridge. You might scale it at a gallop; you might inch along very slowly, very carefully, so as to be safe. You might forgo the bridge entirely and try to jump the gap on a motorcycle. You never know: At any moment, the bridge could cave in on itself, like a bad metaphor.

When a famous writer comes to your university, you ask her how she navigated the bridge.

“Easy,” she says. “I just answered the troll’s riddle.”

Audience members nod and hum. Why are they nodding and humming? You haven’t heard of any troll, much less seen one. How do you get one to appear? Do you play that Justin Timberlake song? And is it the same riddle each time, or are there multiple riddles, and, if the latter, does The Princeton Review sell a Troll Riddles prep book? But you are not so bold as to pose these questions to the famous writer; you know how ridiculous they sound. No one else seems confused by the logistics of the troll’s appearance, so neither are you. Ah, yes, you muse, nodding, humming. The troll.

It’s of little comfort, then, when those who have crossed the bridge say there is no one right way to cross. For a moment, the singularity, the serendipity of their journeys inspire you. But suddenly, it dawns on you why so many stay on the first side of the bridge. Below. Think of all the bones.

You have to force yourself not to look down.

Let’s run through your options.

You could apply to MFAs right after college. (Ideally, you’ll have graduated.) Everyone says this is a bad thing to do, but hey—if you’re determined, why not? This is what Andrew, Tobi, and Miranda are doing.

Alternatively, you could wait. You’ll need a contingency plan anyway, in case the MFA applications fall through because your worst fears are true and every program hates you. (Not even your writing—you!) Most of your friends say they want to spend some time in the Real World, to interact with people who are not academics or writers. You might as well join them.

What, however, are you meant to do in this Real World? Do you throw yourself hard-core into work, tough it out, and quit once you’ve saved up? You could probably brave consulting for a year or so, but then again you might bump into Frat Guy. You can picture it: him crooking his arm around your neck, complimenting you on your slide deck. (That is what consultants do, right? Make slide decks?)

Or do you enter the field of publishing, ascend steadily through the ranks, only to interrupt that progress when you leave to get your MFA, since you still want to do that? Or do you make barely enough to satisfy your basic needs—as a barista, say— and have ample time to write on the side? Would you have the discipline and selfconfidence to come home every night and plug away at your novel? And if the work you produce doesn’t get you into an MFA program, doesn’t get published—will this interlude have been a total waste?

Do you want an MFA? Your friends raise some good points, both in favor and in opposition. Isabelle doesn’t want to be in school forever, but neither does she want to take for granted how cool it would be to live and work among a community of writers. Miranda thinks there is validity to the argument that MFAs are making all writers sound the same—not that this is deterring her from getting one, but it’s worth keeping in mind. The certification is nice, Eva tells you, but it doesn’t matter all that much if your writing is bad. And no one wants to do an MFA if it’s not a fully funded program. Weigh the pros and cons all you want; at the end of the day, though, there’s a small part of you that believes maybe, just maybe, if you get your MFA, the troll will reveal himself to you.

It’s not too late to pivot to a more conventional, more recognizable career. When Katherine speaks about the healthy work-life balance of her computer science internship, you wonder if you should brush up on your coding skills. But even armed with just an English degree, you have other choices. Miranda is considering teaching middle and high school. Alex is going to law school. Your college English

department’s website says your degree will be attractive to medical schools; surely reading Chaucer has given you, if nothing else, a sympathetic bedside manner. You are being cynical, but deep down you know there is some truth to this marketing copy. Ever since you started calling yourself a writer, you’ve been keen to try new things, invite new perspectives. It’s like when you’re on a swim team, Jo says, and you swim, obviously, but you also have dryland training: push-ups and burpees and such. A writer’s dryland training, on that account, would be to go out, talk to new people, and find new ways to consider the world.

Sarah agrees. Most nights, she says, “I would rather be home eating Jaffa cakes and watching a K-drama. But like, I’m gonna go into this underground club because when else am I gonna go into an underground club?” The things she wouldn’t normally do—these are exactly the things that would help inform writing a person different from herself.

This, you realize, is what you love about writing—the way it’s changed how you inhabit and observe the world. Defamiliarizing some experiences, rendering others more intimate.

Attuning you to the beauty and messiness of life. Sharpening you toward details, microexpressions: your flight seatmate’s chipped nail polish, the twinkle in your pediatrician’s eye as she soapboxes to you about pubertal testicular enlargement. (You had simply asked if she thought you were done growing.)

If accolades and glory were what you were after, you would not have chosen writing. You have chosen writing for the act of it. For the thrill of putting into words something you previously thought ineffable, something you never knew until it was staring back at you on the page. You’d like to say you’re preparing for writing. But perhaps it is more apt to say writing has prepared you—for a richer existence, for a more daring, fulfilling life. That sounds nice, doesn’t it?

It is tempting to fixate on what you are preparing for, hoping for—the dream publication, the book deal that goes to auction—and lose sight of the joys of preparation itself. But, as Alex tells you, these kinds of lofty, long-term goals can backfire. Imagine a scientist, Alex says, who wants to cure cancer. But she gets to her lab and discovers she is working with mice, and she does not care for mice. Plain evil, those little rodents! Quickly, her passion dwindles. She still wants to cure cancer; she’s pretty sure of that. What she isn’t sure of is if she can live with her day-to-day. Take things day by day then. Don’t think of the cliff on the far side of the bridge. Find contentment in the traversal; however you choose to cross, make sure it’s something you can live with day-to-day. Read widely; trust your voice. Every so often, check to see if any magazines have gotten back to you about “Girl Thing.” Is this what it is to be a writer? You don’t know. Ooh la la, indeed.

HOMING BEACON SARAHLEWIS

Lewis

Homing Beacon

Interdisciplinary Studies emphasis, Narrative and Performance

In French, time is a location, a point on a temporal map. One does not say when, but where. A location, like the park three blocks from my grandmother’s apartment where I would run across water-sprayed asphalt, launch myself at sprinklers, crawl, soaked, through the bellies of enormous plastic hippos, soaking in joy as immutable as the buildings which surged towards the sky. A location, made of a precise moment, preserved like a point on a map. And I wonder, then, if we can return, if there is some great, cosmic cartographer who traced our lives in little lines, on a crinkled piece of paper, sold in an alien gas station to cranky travelers in transit who stopped to picnic by the side of the road. They gaze around, rub sleepily at their travel-tired, prismatic eyes, like flies, blinking blindly at the foreign shapes of our little world, smiling at the quaint glow of our measly single sun, producing the map from their pocket, to trace in indolent ennui

the highways of our memories, with their oddly jointed fingers. I think, that when Lem wrote Solaris he knew that the only reason people leave Earth is to come back, to find that cruel miracle that will resurrect the past, transpose our memories into flesh and bring us back to where we belong, where we desperately want to return, where we probably never were in the first place. Maybe there is a way, something that’s been there all along knowledge deep and dark and cold and ancient like the ocean, full of life beyond our comprehension, and answers we can’t understand. Chemists and wisemen, witches and priests fill grimoires with their theories. Maybe somewhere between the corner of my lips and the edge of the universe that expands onto nothing there waits something older, colder, grim and graceful, something that snuffs out supernovas and sews up black holes. Or, maybe somewhere between the deep roiling dark and creatures that look like children's sketches of monsters, Sarah Lewis

Sarah Lewis

there lies the answer to why we’re here in the first place. But what else sleeps in those waters? What knowledge cannot be mapped in sonar and psalms? Where is the way back to what we once had? How deep must we go? How far from shore till we reach where the horizon meets the sea and find ourselves back in that park dripping in water crawling through the belly of the beast smiling up at a sky that we thought would never change.

ULYSSES, THEMASTER RHETORICIAN OFDANTE’S INFERNO

ABIGAILMATSUMOTO

Abigail Matsumoto English Major Literature emphasis; Digital Humanities Minor

Ulysses, The Master Rhetorician of Dante’s Inferno Excerpt

Despite Ulysses’ damnation and subsequent disembodiment, his abilities as a rhetorician have not diminished. Ulysses’ speech is delivered in the "high style" of poetry, a fitting form for the content of his oration. Dante identifies the “highest style” as corresponding with tragedy in Book 2 of his De vulgari eloquentia (Alighieri, De vulgari eloquentia, Book 2, 56). He notes that the “high style” consists of “the noblest and most harmonious words, using the highest forms (the canzone and the hendecasyllable) and rhetorical constructions, and singing only the noblest subjects” (Durling 326). Ulysses’ speech follows the traditional narrative structure of a tragedy: it presents a beginning in their departure westward from Circe's island, a defined midpoint at the Pillars of Hercules, and a tragic ending, fueled by its protagonist's own hubris, upon seeing the mountain of Purgatory. Scholar Teodolinda Barolini also identifies the very style of Ulysses’ speech as adopting the “anti-oratorical high style” that is free of the ornate linguistic flourishes observed at the start of the Canto and imbues Ulysses’ words with convincingly heroic “cadences of authentic grandeur” (Barolini, The Undivine Comedy 89).

Ulysses’ usage of rhetoric to subtly portray himself as a tragically doomed hero is evident in his monologue. The first instance of this occurs in lines 94-99, in which he states that even the love of his family members could not “conquer” the desire within him to explore further. He lists all three of the family members and the specific nature of his affection for them, and in separating them as individual entities, instead of simply summarizing them as “his family,” he emphasizes the enormity of what he is turning away from. This implicitly convinces the readers of the magnitude of his desire to explore, as it directly positions it as being even more than the immense and individualized love he has for all of his family members. Ulysses placing his love for his family as directly oppositional to his desire to explore also reduces Ulysses’ complicity in the decision to abandon their homeward path. He impresses upon Dante and the reader that the overwhelming “ardor” that he feels for “gain[ing] experience of the world and of human vices and worth” (26.97) essentially “conquers” his reason and forces him to abandon his family. This shifting of responsibility paints a heroic and admirable image of Ulysses and subtly absolves him of blame. Rather than actively choosing to abandon his family in pursuit of his own interests, he is simply overwhelmed by his desire for “virtue and knowledge” and must travel to the end of the world in pursuit of such a noble endeavor.

The most notable example of Ulysses displaying his skills as an orator and rhetorician is his “little oration” to his men upon passing the Pillars of Hercules. He

Abigail Matsumoto

opens his speech with a statement by referring to his men as “brothers,” as a means of minimizing his own role as their leader: he is one of them, they are now as close and united in their goals as brothers, and his goals are now theirs. The specific use of a familial term to refer to his men also seems incredibly intentional when viewed in conjunction with Ulysses’ deliberate decision to abandon his own family to travel with these men. Here, Ulysses subtly displaces and minimizes his familial obligation to his actual family and instead reinforces his connection and duty to his sailors, the people he abandoned them for. Ulysses also engages with the rhetoric of the sunkcost fallacy by emphasizing the perilous and lengthy nature of their journey until this point and frames the thought of abandoning it as a massive waste of time and energy. Lastly, he employs an appeal to his men's egos as a means of confirming their devotion to him. In imploring them to “consider [their] sowing” (26.118), he once again returns to the idea of familial honor, as he is using the term to refer to their lines of ancestral descent (Durling 413) and framing their decision to go forth as one that confirms that they are “not made to live / like brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge” (26.118-119). His usage of juxtaposition is also quite rhetorically persuasive, as he posits the two binaries of existence as either to “live like brutes” or to “follow virtue and knowledge,” and makes the more obviously attractive one only achievable through accompanying Ulysses on his voyage.

Through his speech to Dante and Virgil, Ulysses frames his doomed voyage as one born out of a desire to seek knowledge and virtue. His usage of rhetoric in this conversation is so persuasive that evidence of its influence on Dante, both within the rest of the Commedia and in the actions of Dante as its writer, is observable. Even prior to Ulysses’ monologue, his pervasively seductive powers are tangible: Dante begs Virgil to talk to him and even describes himself as unwittingly “bend[ing] toward [Ulysses’ flame] with desire” (26.67). This encounter also has a lingering effect on Dante, as Ulysses is one of the few figures mentioned in all three canticles of the Commedia: he is referenced in Purgatorio 19 by a siren that appears in Dante's dream (19.22) and in Paradiso 27, where Dante is able to see “the mad crossing / of Ulysses” (27.82-83) when looking down upon the Earth from the heavens. Lastly, a notable feature of Cantos 26 and 27 is that despite both occurring in the eighth bolgia, it is only named as the bolgia for Counsellors of Fraud at the end of Canto 27 (27.116). Ulysses’ sin of fraudulent counsel is fairly observable when reading through Canto 26, even without it being directly named, as it is seen quite plainly in his convincing his men to sail with him. However, in failing to name the sin to which this bolgia corresponds in Canto 26 and instead revealing it long after his interaction with Ulysses, Dante implicitly centers Canto 26 on the concept of the valiant yet hubristic and ultimately doomed quest for “virtue and knowledge,” rather than focusing on

Abigail Matsumoto

Ulysses’ status as an eternally damned sinner. Dante is so influenced by the seductive power of Ulysses’ rhetoric that he hesitates to explicitly frame him as worthy of the level of damnation he inhabits.

Ulysses’ influence is also observable at an extra-textual level through the deliberate authorial decisions made by Dante as the author and how they interact with the logic of Hell established in previous Cantos. Ulysses’ character is notably allowed to retain his heroic qualities even in the face of his damnation. His monologue is spoken in the “highest style,” which affords him the usage of “the noblest and most harmonious words, […] [and] the highest forms and rhetorical constructions” (Durling 326). He is also portrayed as comparatively calm and collected when compared to other figures in Inferno. While this may be attributed to the fact that descriptions of Ulysses’ actions and physical appearance are restricted to the brief description of the tongue-like movement of his flame and the manner of his speech, it stands out as particularly dignified when compared to the slovenly, hateful, and clearly unrepentant figures interviewed in other Cantos. One only needs to look to his nearest parallel, Guido da Montefeltro, to see the contrast between his frantic and bitter portrayal and Ulysses' much statelier presentation.

The heroic affordances given to Ulysses’ portrayal in Canto 26 are intriguing, especially in the context of Capaneus’ exclamation in Canto 14 of “Qual io fui vivo, tal son morto,” which translates to “As I / was alive, so am I dead” (14.50-51). This line reflects one of the central infernal logics of Inferno: the people in Hell are punished not only for their sins but for their unrepentant conviction in them, despite the prospect of eternal torture. As described by Barolini, “Hell is precisely a condition in which the soul is permanently oneself as on earth: unrepentant and unameliorated, with no hope of change or growth” (Barolini, “Inferno 14”). Through his very place in Hell, the infernal logic of Inferno informs the reader that Ulysses is unrepentant regarding his actions as a Counsellor of Fraud, and it is this underlying knowledge that emphasizes the extra-textual influence that Ulysses has upon his portrayal in the text. Even though it is known and understood that Ulysses is deservedly damned for his sins, he is still given the space and ability to present his version of events in a way that minimizes his own culpability for his decision to lead his men to their doom. His presentation of the sequence of events is so rhetorically seductive that the reader, alongside Dante, is left questioning the validity of his placement within Hell.

The very reinvention of Ulysses' ending also represents an act of Dante’s authorial hubris. In creating a completely new and unprecedented ending for the Odysseus/Ulysses myth with the full knowledge of its canonical ending, he ambitiously puts forth that he has the ability to re-interpret the stories of the classical era in any way that he sees fit. While it can be claimed that Dante changed Ulysses’

Abigail Matsumoto

ending primarily out of utility, as it makes him a character much more clearly identified as a figure who dispenses fraudulent advice and ties his death to his central sin, it manifests as a complete re-writing of the classical tradition, regardless of its narratorial utility. This theme becomes prevalent when one considers the other textual examples within Inferno in which Dante elevates himself to the level of these classical authors: in Canto 4, Dante quite literally depicts the five great classical poets (Virgil, Homer, Ovid, Horace, and Lucan) as “[making him] one of the band, so that [he] was sixth among such wisdom” (4.100-102). In Canto 24, Dante also participates in the literary tradition of asserting one’s novelty through surpassing his predecessors, as he bids Lucan and Ovid to “be silent” (24.94-99) when he describes the complex transformations seen in the seventh bolgia. Lastly, it reflects the theme of Dante’s gradual surpassing of Virgil as an authority within the Commedia and as a figure within the poetic canon. While the reader has been made aware of Virgil’s fallibility as an authority within Hell through his failure to open the Gates of Dis in Canto 9, Dante’s reimagining of the Odysseus/Ulysses myth represents a textual attempt towards undermining Virgil’s poetic authority. Ulysses is portrayed in Book 2 of the Aeneid as “dreadful” and the “deviser of crimes” who orchestrated the entire wicked scheme of the Trojan Horse that destroyed Troy. Rather than falling in line with the version presented by Virgil in the Aeneid, Dante instead gives Ulysses a sympathetic and heroic portrayal that emphasizes his rhetorical abilities and acknowledges his fraudulent conduct. Within the Commedia, Dante eventually surpasses Virgil as a spiritual authority as well, as he is unable to accompany Dante to the highest spheres of Paradiso.

TREE UCHEOCHUBA

Uche Ochuba Creative Writing Minor

into Film subplan

My park is often foggy and touched by mourning doves. They move quietly above as if beckoning the day’s troubles and joys with their hazy cries. They’ve always been there like you or I have always been there.

I grew up here. This little park with a bench, a jungle gym, and the town hall on the horizon. Nearby the houses rise up two stories, no lower, and housed one family, no more, each unhappy in their own way. Mundanely comfortable, yet caught up in a particular kind of aspirational anxiety. They would say there’s always something in their lives. The lawns almost entirely green, yet mired with flecks of brown. The nearby schools good, yet not quite on par with those of their brother’s children upstate. The wrong kind of people moving in next door.

The streets are quiet and the faces change, but the surroundings stay the same, infused only with the memories of those who once inhabited them, of course. Some people talk about suddenly becoming conscious one day. Just kind of waking up. And I remember one day the sun simply touching me, and there I was. Watching all of this as I grew taller and taller, my leaves stretching higher toward the sun each day.

It was threatening to rain when I first saw the man with the suit. He parked his gleaming car and began to stroll through the park, a stern look pressed across his face. A look of superior disdain for all passers-by. He quietly sat on the bench, observing as a group of cyclists meandered past. He waited there for I’m-not-surehow-long before lighting his cigarette. When he finished, he extinguished the butt against my side, allowing it to fall to the ground.

My roots extend into that ground like a maze, weaving rock and soil and water. Vibrations move through them as life teems around me, storing the eternal memories from when my ancestors first evolved. I remember these things, and they shape me, whispers from millions of years in the past. I know their experiences, and they give me the wisdom to interpret all that is around me. When it rains, power soaks up from the ground into my soul.

It was cloudy when I first saw the tiny boy with the green sweater, eager to soil his new blue-white running shoes in the mires of the freshly rained-on park. He was the kind of child who saw running as far away as possible when his parents’ backs turned as a kind of game. Thus, I wasn’t quite sure where he lived, maybe several

blocks away. Today, he was a little dopey-looking and fell many times as he kicked the ball in circles around me, streaking his corduroy pants at the knees. Joyful determination remained in his little eyes and cheeks as he laughed away his day until he fell into an exhausted pile beneath me. A concerned woman with dark circles around her eyes came up the street, gradually becoming more relieved as she approached. The boy had just noticed the cigarette butt and was trying to put it in his mouth when was gathered by mother’s hands, who wasn’t so amused. She carried him far up the street and around the corner, out of sight.

And when something is out of sight, does it cease to exist? I take in my surroundings, and compared to the fleeting life of the humans around me, I am eternal. They move through endless amounts of space but only for a few short years. Yet I am here for many more decades, but only in a short sliver of space, taking it in for everything that it is worth. I can’t see myself, but I feel that my leaves are pointy, my trunk large and round. If a tree grows in a park, and nobody knows it is conscious, did its life even matter? I think you already know the answer.

It was a bright day fading into a reddish sunset when I first saw the young woman with the white sneakers. She was tallish with a squarish face that only rose out of its mildly-annoyed tension when she was around her friends, with whom she passed so many dusks at the park, beginning in their early days at the nearby college. A group of four, laughing, yelling, chatting, occasionally hopping on the swingset that was too small for them as cannabis mist dissipated up and away, past my leaves. One time she came with a man, a little older, and together they climbed my branches, cheap wine rising off their breath into the chilly air.

The breeze gives me life. In fact, it is what I am made up of. I love sunny, windy days. My veins pulse with the boundless energy of Zephyrus; I grab his energy to grow my very self. And sometimes I think about the wind that I synthesize into my own body. At one point, it was free, and now, for a time, it is within me, static with my limbs in this park. What does it think of me? Is it happy here? And little does it matter, for one day I will be gone, and to its freedom the wind shall return.

It was an overbearingly sunny day when I first saw the pre-teen boy with the sketchbook. He would often come and sit on the bench and draw what he saw. Images of me and the stop sign and the monkey bars peppered his canvasses. He had a habit of collecting objects like smooth stones from around the park. He had a habit of sitting alone. He had a habit of staring off into the distance in a way that made me

wonder what he was thinking about.

And in a way, thinking itself is pain. Things happen to us, and we cannot understand at all why. So we think about them. Why me? Why now? We think that we will somehow reach some understanding of why things happen, which itself is a form of pain. Anxiety. If we could only understand it all, does this mean we would feel no pain at all. And this must mean that the god, the universe, must feel no pain. And a voice echoes back: does this mean even our suffering pleases it?

And years passed, and sometimes I would see them, and others, and I would remember them as Sketchbook’s bowl-cut turned to a mullet, WhiteSneakers began wearing suits and bought a lovely house further downtown (I imagined), the tiny boy grew into a not-so-tiny boy who loved soccer and climbing my branches, and the man in the suit turned up once-in-while and left a yellow filter, scowling at those nearby.

It was a chilly day when I noticed Sketchbook’s drawings in the real world. He would come late at night with a crate of bottles and when I woke up there would be a gorgeous mural on a wall or simply his tag, CR. And the man with the suit would look at his art with that same look of disdain. And one day CR left his initials plastered in evocative cursive over the stop sign nearby.

I’m not too lonely most of the time. I have friends up north, and our messages are carried by pollen on the wind. We talk of our surroundings and the things we have seen recently, the changes coming in the weather. We always know what to expect over the next few weeks: whether the sun will be kind to us or to begin to hunker down for a cold, long winter. Sometimes, friends tell me about fires, sometimes they tell me of humans with sharp objects, and I never hear from them again. But sometimes a breeze comes past, and I strikingly feel that an old friend is there.

And in the midst of the changing seasons, as the park transformed with the passage of time, I observed a peculiar incident that etched itself into my memories; the last time I would see the small boy who once wore his green sweater. It was a day when a sudden gust of wind blew through the park, carrying with it a cascade of autumn leaves. The leaves danced and twirled in the air, their vibrant colors painting a mesmerizing picture against the gray sky. The boy couldn’t have been any older than 9 by now, and he diligently practiced his dribbles several feet away from me with a ball on which was written World Cup Germany 2006. And the sun set and he kept practicing until it was so dark and misty that I could hardly see him, or the monkey

bars, or the stop sign with CR’s initials. As a car began to hum in the distance the exhausted little boy decided to retire silently slouching away from me and across the street. The car came flying through the crossroads and screeched to a halt as the boy crumpled beneath its bumper. And then, as if only momentarily confused, the car sped off, and I caught a glimpse of a terrified WhiteSneakers through the tinted windows.

Days passed, and flowers were placed at the stop sign. People gathered, and mother’s salty tears leached down to my roots as they remembered who he was. And over weeks the freshness of the boy’s memory seared and faded in the minds of people. Until no one could really tell you what he looked like, or sounded like, or who his favorite team was. And sometimes I still saw WhiteSneakers drive past. Signs appeared on lawns with the face of the man in the suit smiling. And one day there was a stage in the park, and people gathered, and the man in the suit approach the podium. And he said wonderful things, about how he loved the town, and how he loved the park, and how he loved the boy, and how we needed someone in the town hall on the horizon who would’ve fought to protect children like him. And people cheered. And so he began to work in the town hall on the horizon.

And so the man in the suit took charge of the direction of the town, and he remembered the park and the disdain and the boy who had crumpled under the bumper of WhiteSneakers. And months passed, and one-day construction crews came, and they began to tear down the park, because it was simply too dangerous, you see, and we couldn’t have a park with a playground so close to the road. Sketchbook defended his park. He gathered groups of others and they petitioned to save the park. And they chained themselves to me. But some things cannot be stopped.

Let me tell you a story from the man’s time in office. Well, something that just happened during this. Amidst the swirling spectacle of life, a young couple emerged, hand in hand, their faces radiating joy and love. They appeared to be lost in their own little world, oblivious to the worries and troubles that plagued the rest of the town. Their laughter filled the air as they frolicked among my fallen leaves, their footsteps creating a soft rustling sound. As they neared me, the young woman and the young man with their disheveled hair paused, as if drawn to my presence. They gazed up at my towering branches, their eyes filled with wonder and awe. It was as if they recognized something beyond the physical, a sense of tranquility and wisdom that emanated from the core of my being. The couple leaned against my sturdy

Uche

trunk, sharing whispers and secrets. I could sense their connection, a bond that transcended words. Their love was palpable, a force that brought warmth and light to the park, dispelling the shadows that often loomed over its inhabitants. And they thought that they were special, and I can tell you that they were not. A billion had felt exactly what they felt, and their energy intertwined with those, even in death. And somehow, for me, I knew that things would be alright.

Eventually, the construction crews took me with them and set the foundation for a new department store. I was chopped up and burnt, and my energy returned once again to the wind, telling stories forever on the breeze.

Uche Ochuba

TRACKS NATHANPHUONG

Nathan Phuong English Major Creative Writing emphasis, Poetry

Tracks

The long walk at dawn over cobblestone age and concrete coolness,

The footfalls pattering from street to wall and back again,

The squealing, scrolling, late-by-a-minute heave of buses down the lane,

The chain of past to present, present on display,

The dark shop windows like half-mirrors on one another, on me.

Coldly flows the river beneath the wide bridge,

Coldly flow the gusts past my face, twining my legs,

Coldly do the tall lamps shine a bitter orange,

Coldly do the pigeons plump and ruffle their feathers,

Coldly tolls the tower bell in the tower keep.

Still, it is warmer through the doors of the station,

Still, the muted bustle within is the friend of morning,

Still, the chill returns past the turnstile,

Still, the ticker display presents the future,

Still is the platform, the people waiting for the train.

LITURGY KAITLYNSMITH

Kaitlyn Smith

English Major

Creative Writing emphasis, Prose

Liturgy

They are often on the edge of towns, rarely in cities, hopefully tucked neatly into the countryside, so that they can accurately print that they have pastoral rolling hills and a clear lake or lagoon. If they have to, they admit they have nothing more than a chlorine pool. God is not in cities, he’s barely in pools, but they always make do. Regardless of the amenities, kids of all ages flock to them and most are eager– they aren’t lying about that, though eager for what is a question to dissect only once they’re safely unpacked in cabins by gender and age. The counselors rally the kids with promises of zip lines and high dives and obstacle courses. They teach them how to read the bible: chapter first and verse second, and then they teach them the camp chants. This is a repeat after me song.

Between the free swims and the campfire singalongs, they sit in circles in the grass with their Bibles in their laps, leafing through the pages as a counselor speaks softly about his life before Christ, when he laid hungover and alone on Sunday mornings, wondering if life meant anything at all. The counselor teaches them about Job and Doubting Thomas and Paul, asking the campers to explain what each story means to them. Those with newly creased Bibles– whose spines resist their prompting to lie open– are often quiet during these sessions, winding a blade of grass around their finger as they listen. Those with leather-bound dog-eared books do the speaking for the others, pride seeping from their constructed smiles when they raise their hand and eloquently distill God’s message, the same way they learned to do each Sunday.

In one of these sessions, they will learn of Abraham’s slave. The girl campers’ bodies will be tanned from the hours in the sun, their skin bronzed except the lines of red around the spot where the straps of their swimsuits clung to their skin. Even in their tee shirts, the boys will be able to see the seductive mark peeking from their neck line, and they will hardly be able to breathe as the counselor begins the tale of Hagar. They will learn Abraham’s wife Sarah tasked Hagar with producing an heir for her master because Sarah’s own shriveled womb could not. With rapt attention, they will watch as she lies on the lawn in front of them and lets Abraham’s ancient body thrust into her until she is pregnant with his seed. They will see a red line laid bare across her clavicle, leading suggestively toward her breast. See Abraham’s hand clutch at the line first, then below it. See the fire ants that keep biting their legs make a trail across her jaw. The counselor will explain that Hagar conceives for Abraham, but so too does Sarah– her raisined womb rejuvenated by the will of God alone– and then they will watch as Sarah casts Hagar from the home. Before them, Hagar will rise from their circle in the grass, step over their crossed legs, and then walk into a Middle Eastern desert with her bastard son wrapped tightly to her chest. They will

Kaitlyn Smith

watch her used body disappear in the arid land. The girls will learn that it is a woman’s folly to believe it is her sex that can create life, that such a miracle is only possible through Him. The boys will learn desire.

They stay in cabins, each themed to a tree or a plant, with stacks of bunk beds and small attached bathrooms that have timers in the showers. The younger children have cabins clumped together like the thickets of trees that surround the camp, but the cabins for the teenagers are littered around the property, closer to the main office or the camp director’s house or wherever the Lord can be reasonably assumed to keep a watchful eye. Some of these cabins are filled with believers who raise their hands to the skies when the rock band– it’s always a rock band– plays a song that makes them feel as if the ex-drug-dealer or ex-male-prostitute on stage is Jesus himself, finally back for the Second Coming. These kids have believers for parents, probably believers for grandparents, and their Bible has crescent moon indents from the way they clutched it when their parents told them all the ways they would burn in Hell. This is a repeat after me song.

Some cabins have friends of believers– or, worse yet, simply children of believers, who might raise their hands when the music fills their ears but only because they know they should. They had to go out and buy a brand new one-piece swimsuit just for these weeks at camp, and they had grumbled about it but eventually complied with the quiet protest of an open back. You can spot them by their bare backs. It is always one of these pseudo-believers, these bare-backed pretenders, that find themselves by the lake or lagoon or hopefully-not-pool one night with a boy who does believe but who knows no better than to meet at the edge of the water and suck the juice from the apple in a girl’s outstretched hand.

He will have watched videos before– more than she has, despite the cross that hangs limply at his throat, because that is what boys his age do. He will know what to do, in theory if not in practice. The pair will have met during free swim, or maybe during a nature hike, when the cabins mixed for some competition or another. He will have approached her, and even he will not be entirely sure why. He will just know that he felt compelled by the way her shoulder blade jutted from her back, or her hair danced across her shoulder, or her swimsuit cut into her hip. She will not speak first but still he will have known his approach was welcome from the way her back arched at his first hello. She will be taken with him instantly, and maybe he will be taken by her too. Regardless, their reunions will be rare because the activities are usually split by gender and age, and he is undoubtedly a little older than her. Sometimes he is a counselor– but he is often just another kid himself, sent off to camp with little else to do but praise the lord during the day and then touch himself at night while the cicadas lull the rest of his cabin to sleep.

Kaitlyn Smith

He will bring her something that his parents sent in a care package, like milk chocolate or sour worms, and they will split the treat while they dip their toes in the cool water, slapping the mosquitos that cling to their arms. When they finish the offering, he will kiss her closed-mouthed, and she will not know what she is doing but she will have seen enough scenes in movies to pretend to be in one herself. She will kiss him back, and then he will indicate to her that she should lie down behind a canoe or some other opportunely placed object. When he enters her, usually with little warning, she will cry out in pain but he will keep their bare bodies from discovery with a swift slip of his palm over her dry lips. This will last all of thirty seconds, and then it will be over, and they will part ways back to their cabins. She will feel either like her older sister, a proper adult, or she will regret it with everything in her being, but either way she will have done it and it is something she cannot take back no matter how much she throws her hands in the air at the prompting of the rock band’s stringy haired leader. She will still be the first girl to dare taste temptation and he will still be the boy that sucked on the end of the cross on his walk back from the camp’s clear waters.

The next day, his friends will ask him why he is so happy, and he will put up a good fight for the whole morning before he caves at their assault and tells them all about the night behind the canoe or between the bushes or in the concrete shadow of the lifeguard stand. They will push him from behind and then beg him to point out which one she is. He will tell them her name, and then he will describe the sensation of being inside her, his face flush with the fresh memory. His friends will slap him on the back to release their pent-up envy, their minds swimming with the new fantasy. Her friends will ask her why she is quiet, why she walks a little behind them, but she will just shake her head and shrug, fingering the edge of her waist band as she remembers the scrape of concrete or itch of dying grass against her bare shoulder blades. She will refuse to catch up to them even when some of the younger kids catch them by the hands and beg them to join in on their latest rendition of Boom Chicka Boom or Bazooka Bubble Gum. This is a repeat after me song.

The first girl and the boy won’t speak when they brush by each other at breakfast, or lunch, or even at dinner, but by the next day her name will be whispered all around the halls, passed from one cabin to the next. This is a repeat after me song. Whether or not she was proud before, she will no longer be, her neck stiff with all of the ways she has to contort herself away from curious eyes. The boy, for his part, will be unable to ever look at her again, his eyes cast in an eternal stare down as he remembers the sweet release of damnation. Boys of all ages will ask her to meet up with them– some of them mocking, most of them at least slightly serious.The original boy will never ask again, but she will hear his voice in all of the subsequent boys–taste the creamy chocolate or sour sweetness still stained on her lips.

Kaitlyn Smith

Most of the believers will have stopped being friends with her by then, but a few will stay, hell-bent on saving her as if their confirmation of friendship alone can stop the camp’s stoning. Her friends that still want to be friends, the bare-backed ones, will want to know how it feels, and they will distort their faces into an awful wince when she explains the dry pain. She will never forget the dry pain–she will promise herself– even when she is old and married and no longer feels the pain. Even when she has her own children and covers their bare backs. Her friends will vow to never do it, but the boys will be awakened by the original conqueror and the girls will be curious and flattered by the boys’ insistence, and one or two more will meet by the water before the summer’s end. This is a repeat after me song. The ones after will suffer less, the novelty removed from the act, but even after more of the girls join the first’s ranks, she will still be marked by the original encounter, condemned to her bare-backed company and the pity of one or two imitation saviors.

The campers will learn another story one day as they sit in the grass, cross-legged with the covers of their Bibles sticking to the sweat on their thighs. They will learn that before Hagar ever had Abraham’s child, before she gave himself to him, or even entered his home, famine ravaged Sarah and Abraham’s land. They will watch with wide eyes as the couple makes a journey to Egypt to escape the fate of their withering bodies, watching them step over their legs and enter their circle, where Abraham will pretend that Sarah is his sister instead of his wife. He will let the Pharaoh take Sarah as his own wife so that the Pharaoh will gift him gold and honor to replace what he had lost. They will watch the Pharaoh’s hands circle Sarah’s slim body, see the stricken look on her face as he balls the fabric of her skirt into his fist and then takes her while her husband watches. The counselor will explain that the Lord sends a plague to the Pharaoh’s home in penance for his and Sarah’s infidelity, and then they will watch as Abraham takes back his wife. They will see Sarah’s own red mark. See the way the fire ants flock to her face as she lies on the grass, her ribs trying to fight their way from beneath her taut skin. The girls will learn that their bodies are not their own, but they are responsible for them anyways. The boys will learn to blame Sarah.

During free swims, the first girl will sit on the edge of the water, a tee shirt hanging loose over her one-piece swimsuit as she soaks her feet in the water and imagines the dirt dissipating from her body through the pores of her skin. The smaller kids will fill the air with crescendos of sound, loud enough that she can pretend not to hear the believers who abandoned her whisper from their place in the corner of the deep end or along the lake’s buoy line. She will remember how she used to wade there with them and whisper about which counselors always flirted with each other or which girl forgot to shave, but she will no longer care about either of

Kaitlyn Smith

those things. In fact, part of her will prefer camp like this, prefer to sit and trace the space of land where her hair had fanned the ground, where no one will bother her so long as the bare length of her calves stretch before her. They are scared of her in these moments, their voices never too loud, like the site of her sin is sacred. No one is more scared then her, but she doesn’t show it, preferring to keep her hand running along the dry grass or rough concrete edge as she forces a soft smile and pretends she understands what she has done.

The camp will drag them all to the top of a hill on the final night with a heaping campfire, where the adults will pass out s’mores and the children will eat them, licking the stick from their fingers. Once sedated, the kids will listen to each adult tell the story of their saving, the origin of their believing. None of them will be the offspring of a believer, a simple third-generation devotee. No, they will all have done something horrible– like had sex in the back of a parked pickup on a cloudless night–and the believers will begin to wonder what it was all worth if they had to have been pregnant, homeless, drug ridden, first in order to be a true believer. This is a repeat after me song, like the man with tracks making a snaking path up his arm who sang to them on stage each night about God’s gentle grace, or the camp director who lifts the sleeve from her left wrist and reveals to them the mangled scars of her own forgotten faith. Despite this revelation, there will still be an empty seat to one side of the first girl who dared to dip her feet in the clear camp water. The believers will even turn to look at her as a counselor confesses she killed her baby before it was born then saw Jesus in the membrane that floated in her bathroom toilet. She will clutch at her stomach as she feels a phantom kick. She will wonder if there is any other fate but this.

After the campfire, where true believers and bare-back pretenders alike cry into their chocolate-stained fingers at the images conjured of faithless sinners, the counselors will pull them aside one by one and ask if they give themselves to Jesus. It will be easy for the believers, who do this ritual once a year with the same practiced quiver in their voices, palms raised to the clear night sky. It will be harder for the others, who know the weight of this gift, who must pry these words with a pained expression from their lips. Maybe one or two of them will resist, refusing to feel the call of God enter their bodies as the boys at the water once did. But most will give themselves fully, their shaking hands tucked under their thighs so that the counselors will finally be satisfied. With this final submission, they will be able to at last leave the sting of the fire and escape into a long, cold sleep.

The first girl will give herself to God, verbally and then the only way their whispered creations of her will allow. She will go back to the water on that final night with a man that is older than her first. Maybe there are tracks on his arm or

Kaitlyn Smith

maybe he has no origin of his believing, but either way he will know God, and he will have offered to introduce her. They will soak their feet in the water as this new boy recites John, and she will imagine the dirt scraped from her heels by Jesus’ calloused hands. Then, without an offering but with God’s word freshly coating her lips, she will lie down behind the canoe or bush or next to the metal legs of the lifeguard stand, hands turned up to let the Spirit in. This is a repeat after me song. His palm meant for raising to the heavens will press to her closed mouth.

DREAMING NIGHTMARES CIERRASPIKES

Dreaming Nightmares

She’s walking down the aisle in her white gown.

Not to the altar or the podium at some cute college graduation ceremony. She’s walking out of her own funeral.

More like limping, or hobbling down the aisle right outside the front double doors of the funeral home. Her casket is open in front of the hurst on a cart on wheels. It’s padded with light pink silk cushions inside, basking in the sunlight, warm and anticipating her body. The hurst sits on the street where the concrete aisle meets the asphalt.

She pauses every few seconds to take a deep breath and gather herself. She has no strength to keep going.

She’s not doing this death walk alone. Hoards of people stand on either side of the aisle, glaring at her as she slowly shuffles to her deathbed. The driver of the hurst stands outside the driverside door, waiting and watching, expressionless. The pallbearers stand to the left side of the casket, waiting for her, watching her struggle to make her way down.

She falls to her knees and starts crawling toward the casket. Everyone watches as she falls and hears her labored breathing. Her wheezing. No one helps her.

She tries to stand up and falls into a group of people watching her from the side. They let her fall back down to the ground. She whimpers and then continues to crawl to the casket. Her knobby knees start to bleed as she drags them across the concrete. She approaches the casket and tries to stand up but can’t. She reaches her arm out, grabs the gold railing of the casket, and tries to pull herself up. She falls back to the ground and starts to sob. She reaches back up and claws at the casket, her fingernails scraping against the wood, scratching the glossy finish. Everyone watches as she flails. No one helps her. No one talks. They just stare like emotionless automatons in their black dresses, floppy hats, dress shoes, and polyester suits.

Then I wake up.

Why is this what I dream about my mom? She did die and there was a funerall, but obviously, nothing remotely close to this happened. I didn’t even look at her in her casket that day, I don’t know what she was wearing.

I didn’t know this before, but when people die you immediately start to forget things about them. At first, it’s the small things like if they had dimples or not or which side they parted their hair to. Like the mandala effect, you all of a sudden think things were there that weren’t or forget small things that were. I could have sworn that my mom wore a silver butterfly necklace that had fake pink diamond gems lining its sides, but when I went through her jewlery the stones were light blue.

Cierra Spikes

Then, over time, the small things turn into bigger things that you told yourself you could never forget, like how they smelled or what they sounded like and you have to find a video with their voice in it to help you remember, or find the shirt that you stashed inside a gallon plastic bag inside a grocery bag, take it out, shove it in your face and inhale, breathing in every scent you forgot. But then you remember that the shirt could lose its scent so you stuff it back in the bag and tie it before all of the good is gone.

I think that it’s easy to forget the good. Too easy. And it makes me angry that I have deranged nightmares of my mom when I could be having dreams of all of the good times we had together. It’s harder for me to remember, but I know we went to teddy bear teas together every Christmas until I got too old or refused to dress up, whichever came first(but probably the latter). I know we made cookies together countless times. I know she took me to Starbucks and I probably thought I was a big baller with my tall lukewarm hot chocolate. But sometimes it feels like it doesn’t matter that I try to remember the good things because my dreams will always remind me that there is plenty of bad that will exist forever. But I still spend my time trying to reach and cling to fleeting details of the fantastic days I had with my mom, ignoring the chain that sinks my feet in the mud of the awful ones.

My dad told me that I can’t control my dreams, but I can control my waking thoughts and I agree. I can try to remember all of the good for as long as I can and smile when flashes of positive memories come to mind. But based on how much I’ve already forgotten in five years, I’m scared that I won’t have a lot of good to hold on to and will be stuck with all the bad. But maybe my waking mind is more powerful than my unconscious mind because I can control my thoughts, and more importantly, imagine. I can create a fantasy, and I get to control the narrative. So, I closed my eyes and created a dream, imagining that I got to talk to my mom again, picking up where we left off.

I walk into a coffee shop downtown and my mom stands up and says, “Hi my sweet angel! I am so happy to see you!”

I tell her, “Mom not so loud, we agreed that we don’t use that term of endearment in public.”

She waives me off with her hand, signaling to me that she never agreed to my terms and conditions. I give her a hug and sit down to a cup of hot chocolate she ordered for me before I came in.

She asks, “How are you doing baby?”

I say “Good, how are you?”

She says, “I’m good.”

Cierra Spikes

For a minute we both just sit there and look at each other. I remember that her eyes are hazel and she remembers all the freckles on my arms. Look at her hair and see that its part to the left. She smiles and I remember that she has dimples and that her bottom lip is substantially bigger than her top lip, just like mine. I try to find myself in her face and see that we have the same face structure and the same eyes.

She says, “I’ve missed you babydoll.”

I say, “I’ve missed you too mom. I miss you all the time.”

We talk about how school is going and what friends I’ve made. We talk about family updates and gossip about the scandals like we used to. She tells me the same stories she used to about our family, emphasizing that some people never change. Then she starts to rant and tell me about “back in the day” so I change the subject to SVU before she spirals too far and I catch her up on the latest episodes. We talk about Bruno Mars and I tell her that he did a collaboration with Anderson Park that she would love. She tells me that she still thinks Bruno is one of the finest men to ever live. We talk about relationship ups and downs and career next steps. We talk about everything until the sun goes down and the coffee shop closes.

We both stand up and walk towards the door. I tell her I don’t want to leave and she says that she will see me again. She turns to me and I hug her hard, clasping my arms around her. I feel her warmth and I don’t want to let go. She says, “I love you, sweet angel.”

I say “I love you too mom.” Then I open my eyes.

Maybe it isn’t healthy to live in fantasy, but maybe living in reality isn’t much healthier. In reality, the last time I saw my mom I gave her a quick side hug, tapped her back with my hand and ran out the door. In reality, the last time I saw my mom and she said, “I love you,” I said “love ya, bye,” under my breath with my back to her. Reality can be painful. So I’ll live in my fantasy world and hope for better dreams tonight.

CHANGING NAMES NICOLETONG

Nicole Tong

Changing Names

The name "Weirui," meaning "the flourish of a spring orchid", comes from the first line of the first poem in Three Hundred Tang Poems, an ancient anthology compiled by a Qing scholar. For centuries, primary school students have memorized these poems to learn how to read and write. Every day at precisely noon, uniformed children across China stand in rows next to open front desks, and with the teacher's command, recite verses on nature and virtue. I like to think this means millions of students know of and have uttered my name (in an involuntarily kind of way). But I've never gone to school in China, so I wouldn't know.

Instead, teachers in the States have a knack for correctly pronouncing the onesyllabled Jacks and Roses of the world. In rapid succession, they blast down the attendance sheet John Jess Will Emma. A Chantal or Imogen gives pause as neurons fire and the brain must work to generate a soft "sh", the tongue rolled against the gum line, or postalveolar affricate of the "g", the throat stopping one's air flow entirely for a tiny burst of high-frequency turbulence.

"Weirui", in her four-voweled glory, produces a sharp furrow of the eyebrow and asymmetry as the upper and lower lip concave at slightly different angles. What ever happened to a name like Lolita, the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate? After years, I learned to pinpoint this open-mouthed expression and swoop in before the second syllable was even spoken, saving them (but mostly me) from unnecessary distress. "It's way-ray," I would say, and then quickly," but I go by Nicole." Sometimes, though, I'd get ahead of myself and some boy named Wyatt in the back half of the alphabetically sorted list would say "Present".

A school librarian once asked me if I minded being called Wendy instead. This left me wondering if that was her best attempt at anglicizing what she had no right in anglicizing or if she was referencing the hit Disney Channel movie, Wendy Wu: Homecoming Warrior.

At times, my name was mistaken for celebrity. I arrived at a new school in fourth grade and dealt with the classic attendance sheet routine. This one was not as seamless as others since I had allowed the teacher a few moments of "Whirly?" before correcting her, but I hoped my fellow classmates were too busy unpacking their backpacks or gnawing on erasers to notice. At lunch, a girl with pigtails and wide eyes stuck out her hand.

"Helenna," she said, leaning into the leeen-a by baring her teeth.

"Nicole," I smiled with closed lips, grateful to be approached but cautious since her demeanor reminded me of Finding Nemo's Darla Sherman.

"I heard Mrs. Turgeon call your name today."

Nicole Tong

Here we go, I thought. "Yeah, I know–"

"Is Wehrli Road named after you?"

Wehrli Road, as I later learned from my mother on the way to Jewel-Osco, was a major street that ran through Naperville. But after only a week in the suburb, I had no idea what she was referring to, so as all clueless elementary schoolers act, I responded, "Well, of course."

She gaped at me and then asked if I wanted half her ham sandwich. Through Helenna, I was introduced to tetherball and Pokémon. Within a month, we had an elaborate vision of our pastel Danish apartment in Manhattan, with me at Juilliard, her at NYU.

When I broke the news that it was "Way-ray," like a mutant form of sting ray, and not like the road, she refused to believe it and then shunned me for an entire recess period. But then I told her the name of my crush from math class and upon having this classified information as blackmail, she knew I would never betray her again.

It's safe to say that no one recognized "Weirui" from the first line of some Chinese poem. But when I reached the age of thirteen, old enough to watch Moulin Rouge, my father told me my English name originated from his celebrity crush, Nicole Kidman. To him, she was not only the face and ethereal beauty of Hollywood, but of America. In a week, I had consumed every drama she starred in, marveling at her versatility and grace (though, to this day, I don’t have the heart to tell my father that the actress is from Australia). Perhaps I was relieved that my parents had not simply flipped through a baby name book or named me after a tennis player, as my Belgian neighbor had done with his son Roger. More so, I was proud that people might look at me and think, "That elegant girl? She does remind me of Nicole Kidman!"

As with all identities, a name is a looking glass. If the forename isn't a dead giveaway to one's roots, the surname certainly is. Years of mispronunciations, extra paperwork at government agencies, astonished looks when I open my mouth and speak perfect grammar, and being skipped over in an interview because the employers had been searching for a wiry East Asian boy in the waiting room all primed me to loathe this strange appendage. Yet, reinvention is easier than one might think. In my home state of Illinois, it only takes a $291 filing fee, a birth certificate, and a request form for a judge to stamp legalization onto a new title. It requires less effort and cost than a professional balayage (some would consider that even more of a transformation). If you're broke, switching monikers only takes telling everyone you know and refusing to respond to the old name. There are caveats to officially changing one's name, of course, like the Taiwanese man who is now stuck with "Salmon Dream" after changing it thrice, that time for a free sushi promotion, only to discover that Taiwan applies a maximum quota of three legal

Nicole Tong

name changes per citizen. Barring these circumstances, name changes remind us that there are pieces of identity we have control over. Some names are unforgettable (who will ever call Kanye "Ye" except himself), but others can be wiped clean with almost no trace. Indeed, I was flown off to the States and anglicized before I could speak, so the omnipresent immigrant experience of stripping one's roots materialized as more of a vestigial limb. "Weirui" was my logistically tiresome protuberance, but I didn't mind having it for company.

Sometimes, though, this limb followed me to the most unnecessary places. Wellintentioned white adults told me that Weirui was a beautiful name and, assuming I had made the decision to discard my heritage perhaps in an act of pubertal rebellion, preached inclusion and self-love. While treating my teeth with fluoride, one dentist who had insisted on calling me by the name that appeared on my chart took it upon herself to lecture me on her adopted children and their journey (more importantly, her support) to search for their biological families. As I lay with my mouth agape, I thought that there must have been a clause in my parents' insurance statement that had supplemented this extra treatment. I wondered what my dentist's children were named.

ACYCLE PJVANG

My phone alarm blares at a quarter before midnight, and instead of retreating to bed, I am getting ready for work at the neighboring deli Subway shop. Only now, the closed down “Subway: Eat Fresh” is now “Malee’s Kitchen: Authentic Hmong Street Food.” A month ago, getting to work would’ve meant a ten second walk to the kitchen, however now it’s a five minute drive down the street. This was a welcome change, at least for my sisters and I. Growing up, there was never a distinction between “work” and “home”. We jumped around a lot, living in a DVD production factory, a chicken farm, a catering business, and the latest, a food truck. Astonishingly, we never once moved houses. Nor did my parents ever hire workers.

Not till now at least—if my aunt and uncle who live in our backyard count. It’s supposed to be a temporary residence. Just until they get back on their feet. My aunt works the midnight shift with me, while my uncle is on the register throughout the day.

It’s a Wednesday night, no different from a Thursday night, Friday night, Sunday night, Monday night, Tuesday night. However, entirely different from a Saturday night; The one night that sleep means actual night and darkness, and my waking alarm is the handfuls of light through the window, rather than a jolting horn. Tonight is an other night.

On every “other” night, my aunt drives us down the road to the shop. We park directly in front of the neon pink and green “NOW OPEN” sign, heavily taped on a weathered, deformed sheet of wood. Walking through the door, moonlight from the bare windows illuminate the subway restaurant: distinct shades of yellow and brown with bright splashes of vegetable wall images. We work in the kitchen, a stark contrast to the dining room. Here everything is white or stainless steel.

My aunt begins her task of preparing the vegetables, meats, and delicacies for the food truck. I begin my eggroll routine.

Blasting my eardrums with alternative rock, I gather all my ingredients, droning out the whirring buzz of the electricity generator and the constant beeping of the security monitor. It’s funny, the thing with repetition. My brain could be asleep and my body would still know the number of cellophane noodles, the width of the cabbage slices, the length of the carrot shreds. Most importantly, the shape of the eggroll. The amount of filling, pressure, and folds. Six months ago, I was good. Fast. Now I prep, mix, and roll the five hundred egg rolls without a single coherent thought. Identical to breathing, watching paint dry, I’ve nearly run out of things to occupy my mind. Tonight is especially glum; a night inbetween distractions. My audiobook has come to an end, with the main protagonist successfully breaking out

of the Institute, and simultaneously ending the extensive line of sister facilities, where children with hints of telekinetic and telepathic abilities were kidnapped, tested, and used to “preserve peace in the world”. I like living in happy endings… fantastical worlds, never quite understanding the appeal of non-fiction. Real life. It’s like reading a history textbook that wasn’t required for class. Another reinstatement of the terrors and tragedies in life. Once again, proving that history repeats itself.

Worse than the graveyard shift is the hours of mindless work. Roll. Roll. Roll. Peel wraps. Roll. Roll. More egg yolks. Roll. Roll. Roll. Refill the eggroll mix. It’s safe to say if there was a world record for fastest eggroll roller, I would hold the title. But of course, the credit isn’t all mine; I inherit this innate ability from the extensive line of Hmong women before me: my mother, my aunts, grandmas, great-grandmas. Efficiency. Compliance. While I have abided the life and character of a docile daughter for eighteen years, my mother, nearly forty, has embodied the essence of a quintessential Hmong woman. Unfortunately, I failed to derive her endurance and staunchness. I am weak, feeble, prone to the corrosion of patience and perpetual expectations, and yet, despite lengthy efforts to escape this designated future, the most effective endeavor seems to be continuing the facade, tolerating the gendered principles. Making eggrolls.

Worse than mindless work is sitting with nothing but thoughts. Nine months ago, I received a scholarship to Stanford. Six months ago, my parents opened their food truck. Two months ago, my younger sister and I ran away from home. One month ago I received my high school diploma. Last week, Stanford University officially announced that fall quarter will be remote.

Life has a funny way of doing things. One minute, I think I’ve finally escaped, the next, I’m back in the trenches. That’s the thing with non-fiction; No telekinetic ability to end the system. Just a line of history repeating itself. But where does that leave me? Am I destined to always be pushed back, stuck in the mindless work that I do best? Maybe, just maybe, if I believe enough, happy endings can exist.

Because today, my best friend told me he and his friend found an apartment in Santa Barbara. And that they need a third roommate. He told me they are in the process of signing the lease and that move-in day will be a month from now. Maybe I am not yet capable of destroying the unjust system. Maybe in my lifetime, I won’t ever be capable. Maybe a year from now, I will be back at this Subway, making eggrolls. But maybe, escaping is enough for now. Something my mother couldn’t do when bridenapped at age thirteen. A choice my grandma didn’t have in her arranged marriage at eleven. Maybe history repeats itself. But also maybe, it doesn’t have to. At age eighteen, I move out.

CONVERSATIONS WITHJENNY EMMAKEXINWANG

Emma Kexin Wang

English Major

Creative Writing emphasis, Prose

Conversations with Jenny

The first thing I noticed about Jenny was her long black hair, knit in girlish braids on her sides like intertwining snakes.

Aunt Bai first mentioned Jenny when we were driving back from the church service that she had forced me to attend. This morning, as I heated up the expensive bread that only me and Baobao, her son, ate, Aunt Bai folded her arms on the kitchen counter, her eyes bright like a child’s. I turned away and pretended to check on the microwave. A month ago marked the first time she had put her arms on the counter and leaned towards me with that same, indulgently eager look. Being the first time in seven years that we’ve all gathered together, she announced happily, she would drive me and Baobao for a “family getaway” in the neighboring Oklahoma woods.

“Lili ya,” she said, pronouncing my English name in Chinese, “After breakfast we’ll go to a church service that I’ve been meaning to take you for a long time now. This Church is so modern and the preacher speaks very well. It really appeals to young people.”

Not knowing what to say, I turned helplessly to the microwave and took out my bread. It was too hot. “Ouch,” I said, dropping it onto the floor where it made a sad, flopping sound.

On the car ride to church, I turned my face away from Aunt Bai and put in my earbuds so I could pretend to not hear her even if she tried to talk to me. Outside, the Texan skyline hung low, and the land beyond the road stretched out far and wide, the emptiness suffocating.

I suddenly remembered a question on the quarterly student wellbeing communities survey that asked “To what extent do you try to reframe your thinking in a positive light when you feel sad and dejected?” This trip suddenly seemed like an opportunity for me to finally answer “Extremely – 5” instead of “ 0 - Not at all.” I started picking at my fingers in excitement. Even by thinking further into the future after the church, I was already reframing my thinking in a positive light!

Encouraged, I thought about the rest of the survey, and decided that I had a good chance of also changing my answer for the prompt “Whenever something bad happens, I can’t wait to tell my friends”, the awkward phrasing of which made me think that the intern in charge of creating the survey had merely copied and pasted the question from “Whenever something good happens, I can’t wait to tell my friends”.

“Lili a,” I heard Aunt Bai say. “I think you’d benefit from Christianity.”

I kept as still as lamb, hoping that she hadn’t somehow figured that nothing was coming out of my earbuds.

Emma Kexin Wang

The Church was exactly how Aunt Bai had described, modern and minimalist in design, with random red contorting sculptures on the lawn. In the inside lobby, my eyes were bombarded with dozens of abstract art pieces that vaguely recalled Christian iconography accompanied by colorful round sitting things under them, presumably for people to ponder the art and their relationship with God. It all looked like the architect had gone to Silicon Valley and transfigured the aesthetic ethos for Google to a Southern Baptist Church.

Even before I entered the main service room, I could smell the heat emanating from the bodies of hundreds of people who had just driven in lightly-ACed cars for thirty minutes but because they had trouble finding parking close-by, were forced to sweat under the 104 degree sun for a good few minutes before reconvening into this confined space. I kept my head high as an alert deer and reminded myself that I was twenty-one and lived in the Bay Area, no longer sixteen and alone in the South. This meant that when I bumped into little white children I waited for them to stare expectantly at me and I only stared back until they hurried to rejoin their parents.

Entering the dome-shaped door to the main hall, the first thing you see is this huge projector that tracked the preacher’s every move from multiple angles, even a crane shot that zoomed out from the preacher's face and showcased the audience. It all felt a bit surreal, like I was attending a TED talk instead of a church service. The preacher, a white man in his late thirties or early forties, waited for us to all find seats before he began talking to us as if we were his friends.

I was a bit distracted by the potted plant on one of those three-legged tall chairs that was obviously relevant to the sermon and tried to take in the preacher’s words and body language for a hint of the metaphor to come. Something something love for the unextraordinary… something something most of the God’s people … a tale from the Bible… My attention was spinning away and because I hadn’t actually eaten (too ashamed of dropping the expensive bread and too disgusted by the idea of putting something in my stomach with contamination from the dogs and shoes and the outside world) I felt drowsy. The third time my head bobbed down and sprung up I knew I had to do something drastic. I decided to text my best friend from high school.

ME: bro, the preacher just called jesus his “bro.”

ME: im at a baptist church btw

FRIEND: what

ME: yeah isn’t God supposed to be like scary and shit? why r yt men buddyfying him

FRIEND: dude wtf u can’t just text me out of nowhere after being off the grid for two months

Emma Kexin Wang

FRIEND: but no yt ppl r rlly saying whatever

ME: just mentioned roe w. wade. and then said “don’t be scared of being canceled.” i mean ig???

FRIEND: fuckin baptists

ME: lowk is it disrespectful to god if im texting u rn

FRIEND: idt god cares about u texting tbh

FRIEND: he’s probably thinking about stuff like war and women’s rights

ME: lmao what

ME: r those the two most pressing issues? war and women’s rights? im sorry but ur soooo white lmao

I stared at the screen where the three dots indicated that my friend was still typing and I read and reread my text. The three dots went away and I stared at my phone for a few more minutes before putting it away.

Sitting next to the aisle, I peered over at the white family across from me. Five in total, a grandfather, parents, and two grandkids with wispy blonde hair that made them look bald. The grandfather, who was in a wheelchair, sat closest to me. The pigmentation of his face was a deathly green and pink, his skin sagging into folds, and he had a big mole with two white strands sprouting out right next to his lip. I couldn’t tell whether behind his glassy eyes he was conscious of that fact that the preacher was talking about people like him, ordinary middle-class white people who achieve nothing more than a shitty version of the American nuclear family where his two granddaughters would end up in a high school like mine and make a Chinese best friend to bring home to Thanksgiving dinners where he would, for the first time, open his seemingly immovable eyes wide and reassure her that that he will see her in heaven because Asians were not as bad as Black people who were cursed descendants from Ham.

A loud smash resounded in the auditorium and Aunt Bai gave a little scream. The preacher had thrown the pot onto the ground. White people laughter started rippling until it became a roar. The shards, the preacher said, smiling, represented each one of us before God saves us. Magnified on the gigantic projector, the shards of ceramics next to the preacher’s leather shoes stared determinedly at its audience, ripe with metaphorical meaning.

At the end of the service when the Church band went on stage to sing gospel, I pulled out my phone to text my friend as I sensed that Aunt Bai might take the opportunity of walking out together to speak to me.

ME: hey the preacher just threw a pot onto the ground as a metaphor for

Emma Kexin Wang

ME: how god shatters you before he glues you back together? i think?

ME: but isn’t that like standard male manipulator practice

ME: anyways theyre singing gospel rn and everyone’s standing up to sing and it’s slightly scary.

ME: holy shut this is a wholeass rock concert lemme send u a video

FRIEND: rick and roll church

FRIEND: *rock

ME: it’s like theyre physically trying to force jesus into my chest i can feel the bass so much

FRIEND: yeah i think that’s what it takes for white conservatives to feel something

ME: btw i saw an old man who looked like your grandpa

ME: remember that time he told me that he was praying for me to convert to christianity so i wouldn’t burn in hell.

My friend had stopped responding to my texts again so that I was forced to stare at the screen without the three dots as I made my way to the bathroom, accidentally pushing the door open for the Men’s. The man behind me poked me in the shoulder and pointed to the other side. “Woman,” he said. Embarrassed, I quickly went into the bathroom and seeing the huge line, turned around and abandoned my original plan of stuffing my bag with free pads.

On the drive to lunch, Aunt Bai stopped in front of a red light, and looked down at her phone propped between her legs.

“We’re going to a restaurant with Jenny jie jie,” she said, “I’ve been meaning to introduce you for forever.” I looked at the red light nervously, thinking about all the other things she’s been meaning to do.

She explained that Jenny was part of the Chinese church, where she led the youth and adult Bible study group. “Jenny a, is only two years younger than me, but she looks like she’s in her twenties.” I did some quick mental math.

“Jenny’s fifty?” I asked. Jie jie, an “older sister”, was definitely not how I should be addressing her.

“Yes,” she responded with her head still buried, scrolling through seemingly endless unread WeChat messages. The light before us still hadn’t turned green. “Whenever we go out to drink, Jenny’s gets carded. Everyone thinks that she’s my daughter. Her face has no wrinkles and she’s very skinny. It’s because she’s never had children. Having children destroys your body. I never should’ve had children.”

All summer, she had repeatedly expressed her regret over the birth of her

Emma Kexin Wang

children, shaking her head comically, her big saggy eyes simultaneously sympathetic and ridiculous, like both a circus animal and its trainer. The first time it happened we were in the Oklahoma cabins eating the beef that she had grilled for us in the heat. I glanced at Baobao who, thankfully, seemed too engrossed in his video game to even eat, [than to] hear his mother. Aunt Bai downed her second can of beer. “If I could relive my life, I would’ve never had him,” she pointed at her son, who didn’t move. “Ha ha,” she laughed, “Baobao,” she ruffled his hair and pinched his big ears, which were the same as hers, “did you hear? You ruined my body.”

I stared at the lights, mentally saying “now” until they finally turned green. Beside me, Aunt Bai’s neck was still bent over like a broken stem and because I wanted to punish her I sat in silence and waited for the cars behind us to honk.

No matter how many times Aunt Bai had told me that Jenny looked twenty (she liked to repeat her observations to anyone who would listen), I pictured an older woman, who, would have tied her long, graying, hair in a bun, would have resting wrinkles around her mouth and eyes, the ones on her forehead would be thin because in her twenties she would’ve already thought about the inevitability of aging and consciously never raised her eyebrows.

Jenny sat at a corner table bordering both the window and the wall (exactly the table I would’ve chosen) when we arrived at the restaurant. I noticed her almost immediately, but because she hadn’t seen us yet, I inconspicuously slid my gaze over the rest of the restaurant, at the fully clothed tables with the spinning trays, at the watercolor paintings on the walls, determined to appreciate the authentic interior design before being found out that I had seen her.

Aunt Bai cried out first, “A, Jenny!” I was facing the complete opposite direction from her then, and did a full spin, eyebrows raised to display my surprise.

Hearing Aunt Bai’s summons, Jenny looked up from her phone, and started waving her entire arm enthusiastically like a child.

As we stood around the square table, I debated about where to sit: in front of her, where she had easy access to talk to me; beside her, where it would seem too imitate for a first meeting as she could accidentally bump her arm into mine; or diagonally across, where, if we chose to talk, it would be the most difficult. Before I could sit down, Aunt Bai naturally took the seat next to Jenny, while her son took the seat farthest away (he strongly disliked her and had performed an entire diatribe against her in the car.)

Sitting down in front of Jenny, I finally took my chance to look at her face, which for the most part, was shifted towards Aunt Bai in conversation. Though she looked much younger than fifty, she could never pass as a twenty-year-old. Jenny wore simple black glasses, the frames more circular than rectangular, exactly in line with

Emma Kexin Wang

the latest Asian fashion trend. The skin on her face looked thin and wasn’t attached to fat, but didn’t droop and cluster like Aunt Bai’s. What surprised me the most was her hair, sleek and long and dark, without a single strand of white buried in them, twisted into loose braids that flowed effortlessly down the front of her shirt.

The first words Jenny spoke to me were these: “Lili (like Aunt Bai, she pronounced my English name in Chinese), you’re very slim.” The Chinese word she used, miao tiao, was far more literary and old-fashioned than I was used to.

“No, no,” I replied, only half a formality, because I was nowhere as thin as her. Dressed in plain skinny jeans and a white, somewhat translucent button-down, she still looked good, with two strands of carefully pulled-out hair perfectly framing the sides of her glasses and face. When the waiter came, we ordered our food: Sichuan dry-pot for us three, and a plate of braised pork for Baobao.

“Lili a,” Aunt Bai said, both her and Jenny were staring at me, and I couldn’t decide whose gaze I wanted to avoid more so I started peeling off the skin on my thumb. “What did you think of the service? Wasn’t it inspiring?”

“Sure,” I said, sliding a hangnail into my cuticles.

Aunt Bai looked up at the ceiling, and I looked up at her, and Jenny was still looking at me. “I love how the preacher organized his sermon. Around common people. It’s good to know that God will save us if we work hard.”

Only a thin line at first, I waited for the blood to gather a discernible shape before raising it to my lips and sucking it off. Then the terrible memory of me leaving the bathroom without making it to the sink to wash my hands that had touched the Church seats where so many white people had touched it without washing their hands that had probably touched their dogs unwashed fur and saliva and I made myself resist the urge to go to the bathroom. My tongue had barely touched my finger. Five-second rule.

“And when he shattered that vase on the ground, ha ha ha,” Aunt Bai doubled over with joy. “That startled me!”

I gave a vague nod. My mother’s well-meaning sister who genuinely cared about her niece, enough so to text my mother, across a 14-hour time difference, about how I was doing because I always seemed too busy to text her back.

All this time, Jenny had been sipping her water slowly through a straw. Maybe it was the general stillness of her body, catching the exact position under the light where it reflected off her glasses, making them opaque.

“What about you, Lili,” Jenny said, leaning her body towards me. “What did you really think of the service?”

I thought about the disabled old man with death in his eyes and the promise of being saved. The illusion of Jenny’s glasses made me feel like my own scanning of her

Emma Kexin Wang

facial features, her square shoulders, her two pretty braids, would all go unnoticed. What did these white Christians think of her, I wondered, before remembering Aunt Bai mentioning that she worked at the Chinese Church, which made me feel bolder.

“I think he told people what they want to hear,” I stared at my cuticle, now, without me sucking it, had begun to bleed again.

To my surprise, Jenny started laughing, a queer imitation of Aunt Bai a few seconds ago. “Kids who grew up in America,” she said, turning to Aunt Bai, “are really different.”

“I didn’t grow up in America,” I told her, “I’m Chinese.” I needed her allegiance. I needed her to know that I was allegiant to her, not some Chinese-American kid who wouldn’t understand where she came from. I looked over at Baobao, and for the first time, I witnessed with a kind of revulsion, with his loudness in the car claiming that Jenny wasn’t a responsible adult and had almost killed him, his childishness in plugging his ears with his headphones and sporadically laughing out loud at his video game in front of him. What did he know about responsibility? What did he know about talking to other people and understanding what wasn’t spoken?

“Of course of course,” Jenny waved her hand at me, her laugh morphing into a giggle, “Aunt Bai told me that you came to Texas for high school right? And moved out of her house to board after your freshman year? That’s already seven years in the States. That’s a third of your life Lili, don’t you think you’re more American than Chinese now?”

Six years ago, the first time I went home after coming to America, I wore a crop top. One of my father’s friends who was visiting announced with a laugh that I was officially Americanized. Back then, the problem of Americanness and Chineseness and Chinese-Americanness had plagued me; now, I mostly found it irritating.

“Sure,” I said.

Just then, the waiter brought up our food – a plate of pork for Baobao and our mountainous dry hot, under which had a little fire kindling. I stared at the bubbling vegetables at the top, and let myself reach for the food only after Aunt Bai and Jenny had each gathered potatoes, seaweed, fish balls and beef, all the while eyeing the speed at which Baobao devoured his plate as his eyes were glued to his phone, perversely excited for Aunt Bai to admonish him. Jenny was the exact opposite, almost timid in each deliberate bite.

“When did you come to the States?” I asked, after we had all filled our stomachs sufficiently enough to begin conversation again.

Jenny took off her glasses, and, putting them to the side of the table, brushed her two strands of hair behind her ears, which I noticed were unusually large and stuck out to the sides. I imagined telling her that her ears were cute, to which she would

Emma Kexin Wang

confide that they were actually a point of insecurity because Chinese people didn’t like any big features except for big eyes, and I would feign surprise about the beauty standard that I knew too well, and tell her again, that I liked her big ears.

Jenny didn’t register my staring at her ears. “About ten years ago,” she said.

“Did you get your degree here?”

“En,” she hummed, elongating the single syllable despite the straight-forward question. “I studied literature as an undergraduate in China, and got my masters in religious studies here.”

“You studied literature too?” I said, excited. Here was the third proof of our commonalities!

“In China,” she repeated, “not like the literature you study here.”

The little allegiance I had gained in favor chipped away easily at her words, but quickly I gathered myself to not be crestfallen. Our conversations with everyone, like with my high school friend, took time to categorize intonations into their respective meaning, to decipher whether a joke was actually a joke or was something else disguised as a joke. Conversations with Jenny would take time, and, here in the airconditioned Chinese restaurant, I imagined a summer where we had all the time in the world.

I wanted to ask her how she had found God, whether through the American academic institution she had felt closer to Him or farther away. I wanted to ask her if she was anti-Trump and anti-guns after the shooting that happened two weeks ago in a Texan high school. I wanted to ask her why she left China and why she was friends with Aunt Bai and if Aunt Bai had confided her suspicions about me and that was why she had taken me to Church and to see her “young” Christian friend.

“Why did the sermon look like and sound like a TED talk?” I asked.

“To modernize,” Jenny said without hesitation. “To show that Christianity should be accessible for everyone, especially for the increasingly atheist youth population.”

“Do you think God’s plan for you is to talk with the youth?” I said.

“I would like to think so,” Jenny said. “But like you, like everyone, I have doubts about the choices in my life too.”

It was then that I registered that there wasn’t a ring on her finger. How it was unlikely for a Chinese woman to not be married, to live alone, even more so to be divorced.

“She taught English in China for a few years, earning good money too,” Aunt Bai interrupted. “After then, she worked at an elite finance company that her father had secured for her.”

“Ai ya, are you going to keep interrupting me?” Jenny slapped Aunt Bai playfully, her mannerisms more girllike than I had ever been in my life. Aunt Bai merely

Emma Kexin Wang

turned back to her bowl of rice, and started piling more of the spicy dry hot on top.

“So why are you in the States?” It was her turn to ask questions.

“I want to be a writer,” I said, and, after a second, added, “I think that’s difficult in China.” I knew where Aunt Bai stood on the government, which differed from the views me and my parents shared, but as for Jenny, I was left in the dark.

She took no time to press further. “Why do you think that?”

“I don’t think I could write the things I want to write.”

“And what do you want to write?”

“Horror,” I said, preparing the answer to her next question. Jenny had already opened her mouth to press me further, the corners of her lips lifted before she paused. Turning towards Baobao, she asked, “Can I have a piece of your pork?”

Later, Jenny touched me twice, once on my stomach, once on my shoulder. Having already decided that she would make ribs for dinner, Aunt Bai marched us to the general Asian grocery store across. We parted ways, Baobao’s interest peaked when picking out different types of meat, leaving Jenny and I strolling with our own cart behind, stopping occasionally to look at different snacks that reminded me of my childhood. In front of the red-canned sweet milk Jenny asked me if I wanted to stay at her house for a couple of weeks, which was an hour away from where Aunt Bai lived, and come to her Church. Because I was a bit in love with her, I accepted only half-heartedly. Maybe her husband was in China like my uncle. Maybe her husband was dead. Maybe she lived with fellow Christian sisters who vowed never to have sex or marry. I hadn’t thought much when Aunt Bai told me that she had been meaning to introduce us for forever and in that moment I wished that I had eaten the disgusting bread on the floor and gotten a stomach ache and never seen the creepy modern Church and never talked to Jenny. Perhaps mistaking my silence for deep consideration, Jenny pushed the cart along ahead, her braids hanging stiff at the sides of her head, and I imagined how much finger strength would be needed to bear a pair of scissors and cut them off.

“Did you like the new Jurassic Park movie?” I asked. She had told me that she had watched it in theaters last weekend while I had pirated it online.

“Not at all,” she said. “Did you?”

“No,” I said, and with that, my misery dissipated as quickly as it had come and I was above the clouds, happier than I had been the entire lunch. I even put a little bounce into my steps. “What other movies do you like?”

“Hmmm,” Jenny said. “I like movies with clear morals, like Shawshank Redemption or Late Night Shows.”

Emma Kexin Wang

“Late night shows?” I asked, not wanting to comment on the first thing she said. My eyes wandered to matcha-filled cream puffs, which Jenny misunderstood and immediately grabbed two of.

“En,” She said, pushing the cart towards an empty drink stand. As we approached, the person at the counter, who I had assumed to be an old woman but was actually a young girl with completely fried silver hair, addressed us. “Welcome! Have you ever tried purple rice yogurt?”

I hung a few steps back as Jenny stared intently at the menu.

“Lili,” she said, beckoning me forwards. I stepped forwards without thinking. “Do you want anything?”

“Sure,” I said, and already felt a familiar pang despite just haven eaten. Hunger had to be somewhat psychological. Or we simply have a second stomach for sweet things.

For the next few minutes, we spent happily deliberating which flavor to get, with the young girl at the counter eagerly telling us her opinions on all of them: the original purple rice is obviously a classic if you don’t like things that are too sweet, sesame and red bean are a bit more on the sweeter side, and mango added a bit of freshness that countered the dense purple rice. I briefly wondered where Aunt Bai and her son had walked to, and whether it would be rude to not get them the yogurt. But, I couldn’t ask Jenny to buy them extra because I wasn't the one who was paying. I eventually decided against speaking up and on the purple rice, as did Jenny.

“The thing about late night shows,” Jenny said as we stepped away from the counter, and it took me a second to realize that she was reviving our previous conversation, “is that when you watch them, you understand a history of American culture.”

“Really,” I said, feeling uneasy.

“Really,” she said, she looked like she truly believed it. “You need to watch them to truly understand American culture. As well as American economy. You have to know the culture of where you are to survive, right?” I didn’t fully understand what she meant by American culture, or the economy, and it was so easy not to ask, not to know.

Just then, the employee called out to us, and I hurried, grateful, to get our two purple rice yogurts, complementing the employee’s silver hair, to which she denied in a Chinese way, saying it destroyed all her hair follicles. As she waved us goodbye, I vaguely wondered if she was into girls.

Again freshly occupied by food, we remained quiet, and I scanned the aisles for Aunt Bai. Her slumped figure stood at the front with the newly arrived items, her brows knit so hard in deliberation I wanted to tell her that it wasn’t childbirth that had sagged her face.

Emma Kexin Wang

“Lili ya,” she gathered me forwards, “look here, which one do you want?”

I looked through the packaged desserts and pointed to the out-of-season mooncakes, which she immediately grabbed and put into the already brimming cart. I remembered my mother’s words and felt a pang of shame. She took her time and chose two other beautifully-packaged boxes with drawings of flowing phoenixes and women in hanfu, then, with a start, forcibly pushed the cart towards the counter.

As we walked out of the grocery store, Jenny handed me one of the cream puffs.

“I’ve never tried muo cha,” she said, inspecting the back of the packaging, “isn’t it supposed to be bitter?”

“Naturally yes, but in a cream puff…”

Carefully, she put it on the top of her bag, as if not wanting to squash it. I imagined her across her couch later that night, wearing her pajamas with her bra washed and hanging up in the bathroom. She would turn on the TV to the Late Night Show with James Corden and laugh at one of his stupid British jokes and suddenly remember the matcha cream puff, and, opening her bag, to see it perfectly preserved. She would bite into it, taste the intense sweetness of the cream and almost spit it out before the matcha flavor would arrive, late, on her tongue.

Without asking, Jenny grabbed my phone from my front jeans pocket but had to give it back for me to put in the password.

“Here’s my WeChat. Text me anytime you like,” she said, and winked.

“Sure.”

“If ever you want to talk.” And with that, she waved goodbye to Aunt Bai and Baobao.

Even though we had already made many promises in the three hours that we talked to each other — I would go visit her on the fourth of July weekend to see fireworks (I later found out that she had gone with a Pakistani girl), I would attend the youth groups at her Church, I’ll contact her even after I go back to California — the moment I handed back her phone, I knew I would never text her with a certainty that trumped every good feeling that I had during the day.

Lying in bed that night, I thought about being saved, and whether texting my high school friend about the sermon earlier had qualified me to answer “Extremely - 5” on the wellbeing survey about sharing, and reframing, and talking to the people in your life.

THEMOTH JENNYXIONG

The Moth

A leaf or An eye? I Stop in my Tracks and peer

At the ground

It is a Giant moth

Silky and Brown with a Wing torn off

He is the Color of Dunes at dusk When purple Dips below The sand and The moon is A lemon

Unnerving Like an eye

Unlike him PolyphemUs he does

Not eat men Only grief I wonder Who ripped his Wing apart

Creating A cyclops

English Major

Creative Writing emphasis, Prose

Jenny Xiong

With one wing Gone and one Eye left he Cannot boast Of glory Who knew it Would be so

Transient

Like starlight

Powerless

WHATMAKES ALIGHT BISEXUAL

BENJAMINYAN

What makes a light bisexual

is not quite the color of the light, which is typically blue, purple, and pink, but can just as easily be red or Christmas green or gold as an electrified penny. I once dated a man who bought me roses and yellow marigolds to say sorry. He was my second love—my third mistake. The first love was a girl my age. She wore gray Levi’s jeans, played the piccolo, and shot cannon shells from her eyes when I talked to beautiful boys in her radius. It was never that serious. The first mistake predated the first love; it was made of unsaid words, amputated vowels, and infrared light we can never see. Love is a vowel even in its absence. It finds its way between letters, between bodies. Once, I chose to house love in the black box of a flame-charred heart. It was for a dancer at a queer nightclub, light shearing off his skin into silvery mosaics. He was bent into an elastic C: the shape the Sun becomes when it kisses water along the horizon, that gradual curve of possibility. I had just broken up with someone. Broken, as though I was now shattered glass, jigsaw pieces, light scattering through a prism. As though I needed someone to complete me. I had an essay due that night. It was on the god Apollo, who made hyacinth seeds from the ancient blood of a lover—a man he killed inadvertently, like crushing a soft indigo flower in the coffin of your fist. His fist was divine, made to gaze, never to touch, like poetry, like blistering love. What makes a light bisexual is not something you can gaze or touch. It is the panopticon of thought, the darkened mirror of silence, rays of photons—Greek for light—taking the shortest path through a vacuum, through life. It is a life ready to move the way it was born. It is the gift to love any kind of light we want to love—red light, orange light, yellow light, green light, blue light, indigo light, violet light, the full crescent rainbow of light —as released from the stars, this firmament of wonder.

WHATYOUR MOTHERTELLS YOUABOUT HERPAST KATHRYNZHENG

Kathryn Zheng

Creative Writing Minor

Prose subplan

what your mother tells you about her past

i was going to be a librarian. the dean said a girl couldn’t conquer congress so my world folded itself into time-yellowed pages. there was a university and a boy, and when the guns sounded

we were fast asleep. your father’s roommate died in streets where blood ran in rivulets, and army green danced across my eyelids while i dreamed of pearl-white skies. in that square

we were all believers. in the new world nothing came to us but dust storms and hope that we clung to like rotting gauze. there was a truck

and once a small dog, soft and brown, trotted after us for five, ten miles, and i loved him but i couldn’t keep him. there might have been a baby

before you, but i don’t remember their face. the first house had a red door and railings of termite-eaten wood. still, i planted tulips in the ground. on friday nights the train home rattled cold steel all the way until the water and blisters bloomed

between the walls of my heart. i watched the city sky turn gray with ash through buzzing screens and pressed a hand to my stomach. around me the air was warm and thick with pain and i remembered

one oklahoma summer, as the sun lounged upon the horizon, we drove down the endless dirt road, dandelions and beer bottles dotting the prairie. i let my dark hair tangle in the wind, laughing

as the golden light hit the bright blue of our truck. back then, i thought i could find it in myself to call this a home.

COLLECTION OFPOEMS MELANIEZHOU

Melanie Zhou Creative Writing Minor Poetry subplan

You Asked Me Where We Come From

I was born among zippered bodies and hidden between my mother’s long sleeves before she flung herself into the Yangtze River. When the Communists knocked, we pulled wheelbarrows through the field Revolution is not a dinner party.

My father hacked the dirt and the trees, surrendered his sons for his cup of soup, his spoon of rice. When he died, I stowed his bones like watermelon seeds under the moor. I was a trembling dog. I was rushing yellow silt, and I freed myself for you. My memory burns like ancient incense. Sometimes, I can’t remember my mother’s face or the shape your lips should take to say Yizhang.

Melanie Zhou Creative Writing Minor Poetry subplan

Italy

My lover visits me in Florence. Morning fades like Massacio’s fresco from the balcony.

We loiter in a cafe by the dome. He studies my face and says I look sensitive in the light. 14th century brick dries outside after midday rain and the smell of bay laurel meanders around our corner.

Earlier, we discussed how hard it is starting as lovers. The waiter asks for our second order in Italian. Avete già deciso? He’ll choose.

During the War, they entombed David to protect him from bombing. We walk toward the bridge, following some American voice in the crowd.

Melanie Zhou

Ode to My Mother’s Breasts (After Her Mastectomy)

The night before, I watched my mother shower through the cracked bathroom door.

She stood like a doe stuck in downpour. Water slapped her chest and splayed

into the shape of bones. She lifted each breast and scrubbed the skin beneath the fold.

The ritual tired her: after, she fell asleep with her nipples poking the sky.

When she hoisted me from outside her door in the morning,

she turned my head into her chest. The seal tightened between us.

I wondered how she could be so vulnerable, so soft and impossible to hurt.

Melanie Zhou

Winter Poem

Back home, kids hustle for shit vodka from Lee’s Subaru Outback behind the Circle K. Friday night’s about to crack. We scoop Joanna from her double at JP’s and she swaps her club polo for a hit of nic and my red dress in the backseat. Max’s car whimpers on the desert snow, some diesel-leaking Craigslist beater too weak for Durango roads, speeding by St. John’s on Fifth, Cudi on Max’s lips, finger-tap and snapping the steer, his father’s beer soaking prayer country. At Diana’s Dive, Tao pulls some poppers from his thrifted puffer— hell, you’re high for life in these mountainback parts especially if you ain’t white, slipping and swallowing he drags my back— it does feel right— to the haybarn floor, smirk at the bartender who thinks we’re still sixteen and just when Jo says something smart, something about leaving the West, Max screams scoot your boots and we file and ball-change eyes glued to the fuzzy window watching a woman want for drinking water at the door. I see her shake and chill, scavenging for a stranger’s warmth, so I twist from the herd and stagger through the sweaty pit until I thump the wet glass, but she’s smoke, no nose, no chin, no cheeks, just some ochre smudge bleeding into the red bar light.

Melanie Zhou

In a dream I want to forget: we crash into a field of asters. You fly the plane while we bicker in slow motion. Then the engine tanks & we barrel like laser beams so fast our clothes catch fire & only dogs can find our ashes on earth. The newspapers say we were drunk, say we smoked ourselves out & Mama buries us privately under the big aspen tree in the yard. When the boys in town finally stopped beating you, your neck bent backward & I shut my eyes so you didn’t have to die.